GSD Public Program: Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: Jade Kake, “Indigenous Urbanism”
The GSD’s Fall 2021 Public Programs were all virtual and required registration.
The event was live streamed to the Harvard GSD YouTube page. Only viewers who attended the lecture via Zoom were able to submit questions for the Q+A.
Live captioning was provided during this event.
Event Description
Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Te Whakatōhea) leads a small team at Matakohe Architecture + Urbanism, a kaupapa Māori design studio based in Whangārei in the Te Tai Tokerau region of Aotearoa New Zealand. The architectural department of the studio is focused on working primarily with Māori community clients on their papakāinga, marae, commercial and community projects, whilst the pūrākau (culture narrative) integration strand focuses on working to facilitate meaningful hapū participation in the design of major civic, commercial and education projects within their rohe. Matakohe are also involved in cultural landscape research and the development of digital tools. In the talk, Jade presented a number of recent projects, as well as reflecting on the philosophy behind Matakohe and approach to practice.
This event was organized in partnership with the Harvard Indigenous Design Collective.
Speaker
Jade Kake was born on Bundjalung Country, and received her training in architecture at the University of Queensland and UNITEC Institute of Technology in Auckland. Of Māori and Dutch descent, her tribal affiliations are Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea and Te Arawa. She leads a small team at Matakohe Architecture and Urbanism, a Whangārei-based design studio which she founded in mid-2018. Matakohe works with Māori organisations to progress their multi-residential, community and commercial projects, and with mana whenua (local tribal) groups to express their values, aspirations and narratives in the design of civic, commercial and education projects within their rohe (tribal area).
In 2018, she hosted and produced Indigenous Urbanism, a podcast about the spaces we inhabit, and the community drivers and practitioners who are shaping these environments and decolonising through design. She has written for a variety of housing and architecture magazines and contributed chapters to several books on architecture and urbanism.