Interstices 10

Adam's House in the Pacific

Edited by Ross Jenner, Mark Jackson and A.-Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul

The tenth issue of Interstices derives largely from a symposium in honour of Joseph Rykwert held at the University of Auckland in November 2008, on the occasion of his stay as Distinguished Visitor to the School of Architecture and Planning. The primitive hut seemingly provides a base for a natural perception uncluttered by cultural baggage, where only innate ideas and external necessities prevail in the pursuit of ever purer tectonics and returns to origins. Addressing the assumptions underlying such ideas, this issue raises questions about the need for architecture in the ‘paradisiacal’ contexts of the Pacific; architecture’s relationship with nature and the scene of Paradise; questions of origins and notions of the primitive in domestic, public and commercial contemporary architecture; the connections between these buildings and those original to the Pacific; and the significance of Rykwert’s work today, in relation to discourses of appropriation and deconstruction.

Symposium: 2009
Published: 2009