Mauri-Ora: Architecture, Indigeneity, and Immanence Ethics

Abstract

Where does life live? What is alive? In modernist/dualist thinking, we might assume that life lives through cause and effect—an acting of someone onto something. When conceived through an Indigenous-Māori concept of mauri—life vitality— the immanence of living as a relational field is revealed. An ethical imperative to sustain the wellness of the life-field, mauri-ora, is concurrent with the concept of mauri. This paper philosophically probes the immanent and ethical conditions of this life-field and its relational sustenance as the very ground for design thinking. Here, I explore an architectural project, Te Uru Taumatua, as a case for thinking through mauri-ora (life-field) as immanent ethics in relation to an evocation of ecological vitality. This project becomes a bridge for thinking immanent connections across Indigenous-Maori and contemporary ecological thinking. This paper argues that architecture’s role as an Anthropocenic actor creates the conditions necessary to instantiate socio-ecologically situated immanent ethics as design ethics. What is fundamental to this approach is to reveal how ecological design is a thinking manifest here, in this case study, as the relation of mauri to mauri-ora. Here, Te Uru Taumatua helps to explore an understanding of mauri-ora as an immanent ethics which bridges (design) thinking and practice.