The Architecture of Nowhere

Abstract

Since the beginning of the colonisation of New Zealand, the continual need for shelter against the power of an unforgiving landscape has led to an unrivalled proliferation of rudimentary back-country huts throughout the country’s interior. In stark contrast to the coverage received by New Zealand’s much vaunted bach, and the work of the Group Architects, our comparatively infrequent encounters with backcountry huts, and the issue of accessibility, have allowed the type to slip under the radar of architectural discourse concerning the continued search for an authentic architectural identity.

The Architecture of Nowhere looks at how the largely overlooked example of the rudimentary back-country hut can be examined as an historical source for the development of a national architectural identity in New Zealand. Beginning with an historical overview of the idea of the primitive hut read through the lens of Joseph Rykwert’s On Adam’s House in Paradise and its oneiric significance in Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, this research examines the hut as the site of the origin of architecture, endemic to all cultures and at the intersection of the natural-technological divide.

The thesis examines specific attempts at defining ‘New Zealand’ architecture with recourse to the idea of the primitive hut before examining the utopian novel Erewhon by Samuel Butler as a framework for understanding the role of the back-country hut as ‘the architecture of nowhere’. The back-country hut is dissected in two ways. The first of these is in terms of its important contribution as a site of production for influential utopian literature in the case of Samuel Butler’s experience in the Canterbury high country. Second, the hut is examined in relation to Butler’s conception of mechanical evolution developed in Erewhon. This provides a means to understand and place the significance of the back-country hut within contemporary discourse surrounding national architectural identity.