What’s a historic Maori meeting house doing in Clandon Park?  Visitors to the National Trust stately home are often bewildered to see a traditional New Zealand Maori meeting house sitting in the grounds. The story behind Hinemihi, the house which has survived a volcano, a sea journey, and hundreds of Surrey winters, is fascinating and surprising. Channel Surrey reporter Jenny pays a visit to find out why Hinemihi has become so important to the county.

Pecha Kucha is an lecture format gaining worldwide currency. Instead of being bored to death by the 120minute monologue of the architect as presenter, Pecha Kucha is multiple presenters showing just 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds. For the Nga Aho (a network of Maori design professionals) 2010 symposium, WHAT_architecture presented the ‘paint-by-numbers’ Hinemihi public workshop as a Pecha Kucha. That is one paint-by-number acrylic painting was transformed into a 20-colour Pecha Kucha palette: an polychromatic-aural presentation of 20 slides accompanied by 20 voice recordings!!

Trees are the canvas of carving.

In front of the historic building is a pop-up performance space! That is to say, a high-tech carbon fibre structure that spring loads into a 100sqm temporary awning. This a tent-in-a-bag erectable by one woman!

One big question in the UK lately is how to engage stakeholders in the design process? How can the public participate? Or does design by democracy result in an over-mediated diluted soup of opinion? WHAT_architecture launched ‘paint by numbers’ as a response to the UCL’s Department of Archeology’s research into the surface of an historic building. Paint by numbers is the history of colour on a particular building. Given that this building is a maori meeting house, a wharenui, a whare manaaki, a whare wanaanga, colour also throws up issues of race, culture and empire…

The meeting house Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito (Hinemihi of the Old World) was built in 1881 and stood on the North Island in the village of Te Wairoa, a few kilometres from the Pink and White Terraces on the shores of Lake Rotomahana. On June 10 1886, Mount Tarawera erupted, destroying the village and killing 153 of its inhabitants. Hinemihi provided shelter to numerous people during the eruption and was one of the few buildings to survive. In 1892 the Governor of New Zealand, the fourth Earl of Onslow, dismantled and shipped Hinemihi to England with instructions for reassembly in Clandon Park, Surrey.

Finally a word about the all-embracing ‘Sargeant Pepper’s’ image of Hinemihi. She is not a house specifically for Maori. Whilst Hinemihi is of Maori origins, she grew up in England and is today a house for all… and a carrier of culture.