Albert Refiti
Auckland University of Technology
BGC Fellow

What does the proliferation of eyes in Pacific architecture mean? The talk will cover how the ornamentation and main architectural elements in Pacific architecture suggest that buildings are conscious and that they perceive us. The talk is from a chapter in a book that Albert Refiti is writing, titled Cosmogonic Artefacts: Spatial Exposition of Pacific Architecture. He will also expand on the notion of space of vā or wā in Moananui (Polynesia). This concept underpins his work with the Vā Moana Research Cluster, which he directs at the Auckland University of Technology.

Albert L. Refiti’s research centers around the Moananui (Polynesian) and broader Oceania notions of space and time (vā/wā). His time at the Bard Graduate Center focuses on archival data and living testimony about building forms and practices, to complete a book that traces common elements and establishes a baseline for properly articulating the historic and current links between Moananui buildings and contemporary architectural practice. To that end, the research aims to establish a genealogy of Moananui and Oceanic buildings to distill the common ancestry of building designs and the practices of expert artisans, such as tufuga, kahuna, and tōhunga. This extends and consolidates a record of the distribution of Oceanic built forms and their use to identify factors that contribute to contemporary renaissances in Indigenous architecture in the region. Refiti is the coeditor of The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Springer, 2018), Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations (Berghahn, 2022), and The Concept of Vā: Relationality, Time and Space in the Pacific and Beyond (ANU Press, forthcoming). The fellowship will culminate in the production of a manuscript for a book titled Cosmogonic Artefacts: Spatial Exposition of Pacific Architecture.

Tuesday, October 14, 12:15 pm

38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
Tea, coffee, and snacks will be served starting at noon.
No registration required.