Under the Hood with Jade Kake | Design & Te Ao Māori
For June & July we are focusing on Design & Te Ao Māori on the Design Assembly website – featuring interviews with Māori designers, project features spotlighting their work & design processes, to thought leadership articles that inspire and challenge the Aotearoa NZ Design community. Ahead of our Under the Hood Design & Te Ao Māori online event happening on 17 July, we briefly chatted with one of our featured speakers Jade Kake, Founder of Matakohe Architecture and Urbanism.
Ko Jade Kake tōku ingoa. Ki te taha o tōku māmā, nō Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea, me Ngāti Whakaue ahau. Ki te taha o tōku pāpā nō Hōrana au. He kaihoahoa whare ahau. Ko au te Ringatohu o Matakohe Hoahoanga me Tōpū Pā, he taupuni hoahoa Māori, waihoki, mahi hangere ai au ki Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau hei Pouako Matua. He kaituhi hoki ahau, kua tuhi au i ētahi pukapuka, me ētahi tuhinga mō ngā pukapuka me ngā maheni e pā ana ki ngā whare, mahi hoahoanga whare, me te mahi hoahoa tāone.
Can you share a little about the path you took to get to where you’re at now as an architectural / urban designer, researcher, and housing advocate?
A winding path that holds increasing narrative coherence as the years go on. I grew up in Northern NSW in Australia to a Māori-Australian mother and a Dutch father. My parents were founding members of an eco-community, Billen Cliffs, where much of the homes were self-built and off-grid, and there were strong aspirations and shared values around rural regeneration and community building. I went to architecture school in Brisbane, which sparked an interest in culturally fit-for-purpose housing for Indigenous communities. I moved home to Aotearoa in 2012, and got to work reconnecting with my taha Māori and more deeply re-integrating myself within my own communities. Ever since then I’ve been trying to show up and do the work.
What project will you be presenting at Under the Hood?
Rewi Āta haere kia Tere [book] and KOHA: The speculative worlds of Rewi Thompson [accompanying exhibition].
What was the most challenging part of the project and what lessons did you draw from it?
Not necessarily the most challenging aspect, but the project was intensely collaborative – and I wasn’t the designer of either the book or the exhibition. Jeremy Hansen (my co-author) and I were more so Creative Directors of the whole, providing the overall direction and content to a dazzling array of super talented designers and creatives. The design team for the book included Tyrone Ohia, Eva Charlton and the team at Extended Whānau. The design team for the exhibition included Micheal McCabe (exhibition design), Stephen Brookbanks (exhibition design and installations), and Ross Liew and Margarita Vovna (mural artists). Many others were deeply involved in delivering various aspects of both the book and exhibition, but that’s the core of the design teams. Not least of all, the architect Rewi Thompson (and his many collaborators), whose drawings and architectural concepts were the focus of both the book and the exhibition.
Was there an ‘Aha!’ moment in the project when things clicked and fell into place?
I think when Tyrone (Ohia at Extended Whānau, the lead designer for the book project) brought back a mock-up of the book cover with highlighter pink and blue. The highlighter pink was something we wanted to explore visually early on, but I had always imagined pink and black. It was Tyrone’s genius idea to use blue instead, which really drove the visual language for both the book and the accompanying exhibition.
Now that the project has finished, what are you working on?
Too many things – book-wise, an architectural dictionary in te reo Māori, a Te reo Māori (Aotearoa) to Te reo Māori (Rarotonga) phrase book, and a science fiction novel that I’m attempting to write in te reo. Architecturally, we have an office fitout project that’s reaching the final stage of construction and due to open in the next few weeks, a kōhanga reo just commencing concept design stage, a few marae projects at concept/preliminary design stage, a papakāinga project approaching resource consent, and another marae project at building consent stage. Oh and a very cool, very special Uku Piiruru project for the use of the Māori King during the Poukai!
What insights to your methodological approach or philosophy can you give us?
My philosophy or approach to architecture is that everyone is a designer and it’s our job as architects and designers to provide the right tools to enable people to engage in the design process. Much of our work is through co-design, working collaboratively with communities to design spaces that solve a problem or respond to a need they have, or facilitate particular behaviours and exchanges. I tend to think of spaces as culturally-patterned environments, which can either hinder or facilitate how people ideally want to live (particularly in terms of cultural, social and environmental considerations). As architectural practitioners we are facilitators and experts at synthesising a wide range of opportunities and constraints to produce an optimal design outcome (which is always one of many possibilities) in response to a creative brief. Active listening is a core skill of the architect, as is communication (visual, verbal, spatial).
Outside of work hours what creative projects and/or hobbies are you involved with?
I have too many hobbies that quickly become professional endeavours. Mostly books and shorter form writing, but I’m also interested in exhibitions, film making, installation art, song writing, translating songs into te reo Māori, and poetry because why not, isn’t every creative secretly a poet.
And finally, where to next for you? What areas of your work or personal development are you hoping to explore further? And, where can people connect with your work?
Strengthening my reo! I’m trying to ascend to the next level where I can express ideas creatively and using rich metaphor and simile i.e. I want to write literary fiction in te reo. Architecturally, I’m interested in designing specialised spaces for Māori medium education, such as kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa Māori, whare kura and whare wānanga. I’d also love the opportunity to collaborate more deeply with carvers, weavers and Māori visual artists on projects that are artist-led.
You can connect with me at www.matakohe.co.nz and www.jadekake.com. I’m pretty inactive on social media but my email is everywhere, drop me a message or come say hi if you see me out and about in person.
About Jade:
