Most of New Zealand's built environment has been designed without considering the culture of M?ori and Pacific Islander communities, architect Elisapeta Heta tells Dezeen in this interview.
Heta is a principal at New Zealand architecture studio Jasmax, as well as a M?ori, Samoan and Tokelauan community advocate and co-founder of M?ori design collective at Jasmax,Ā Waka M?ia.
She acknowledged the strides that Indigenous creators have made in legitimising M?ori and Pacific Island designs from "hut-making" to part of New Zealand's architectural canon over the last 50 years ? but says that much of the built environment still does not represent the population.
"It's no wonder that our built environments don't necessarily reflect who we are as people," she told Dezeen. "There's no diversity in it because it's all been designed through the same Western lens." Finding a "population parity"
There are only 75 M?ori architects among New Zealand's roughly 2,000 licensed practitioners and fewer than 10 Pacific Islanders, despite these Indigenous groups making up more than 25 per cent of the country's population.
"The number of M?ori and Pacific architects, relative to non-M?ori and Pacific architects, doesn't match the population," said Heta.
This compares to an even bigger disparity in Australia, where there are 10 registered Aboriginal architects amongst Australia's more than 5,000 practitioners.
The problem is not unique to architectu...