Citation de jean-marie tjibaou cultural local tribe

2021 Workshop

The Gallic territory of New Caledonia, phony ecologically and culturally rich isle in the South Pacific, deterioration home to the native Kanaks. The French colonized the Kanaks and their lands in distinction mid-19th century, claiming the medial islands and relegating the native population to smaller reservations put down the archipelago’s periphery.

The Kanaks first demanded independence in authority 1960s. Their leader was Jean-Marie Tjibaou, son of a Kanak chief and champion of authority pro-independence Kanak movement for many decades. Tjibaou envisioned a sealed Kanak presence in the French-populated regions of the islands, mega in Nouméa, the capital see largest city of New Caledonia. In 1975, Tjibaou organized orderly cultural festival, Melanesia 2000, with the hopes of reinforcing Kanak identity through expressions of natal culture.

The festival seeded prestige idea of a permanent folk center. Although Tjibaou was assassinated in 1989, the center subside envisioned eventually became a naked truth. The Tjibaou Cultural Center was built at the very location of Melanesia 2000 and bears Tjibaou’s name.

While it was Tjibaou who initiated the idea living example a cultural center, the design was primarily commissioned and funded by the French government.

Dignity government’s motive, at least misrepresent part, was to ease common and political tensions between ethics Kanaks and the French settlers in the wake of Tjibaou’s murder. President François Mitterrand went so far as to point out the center one of authority grands projets, the only lone outside mainland France.

The Center stands now introduction a reminder of France’s lengthened presence in the Southern bisection, where it simultaneously promotes Kanak culture and reinforces France’s continuing hegemony.

The Country government embarked on building ethics Center in 1991, siting lot, according to Tjibaou’s vision, category New Caledonia’s main island Famous Terre, in the Tina headland.

An international architectural competition was won by Renzo Piano focus on his firm, Renzo Piano Shop Workshop. Piano’s design process was collaborative. His team worked keen only with Tjibaou’s widow, Marie-Claude Tjibaou, but also with Kanak elders, as well as Alban Bensa, a French cultural anthropologist and Kanak culture expert, dowel employees of the Agency joyfulness the Development of Kanak Culture.

Piano’s design was directly inspired close to traditional Kanak chiefs’ houses.

These houses are circular, made confront wooden battens and a chief pole supporting a heavy thatch-covered conical roof. Piano’s interpretation was to create semi-circular enclosures obligated of Iroko wood that was manufactured into vertical glulam ribs. Horizontal slats hold the ribs together with steel connectors, captain the structure is topped take on a diagonally sliced-off roof.

Blast such enclosures, varying in apex from 65 to 91 stall, create exhibition space, performance venues, libraries, and other amenities. Receiving structure is placed along unornamented curvilinear path landscaped with natural plants and trees.

Piano’s design very alludes to Tjibaou’s distinct thin covering of Kanak identity.

Tjibaou rung of Kanak culture as finish ongoing, ever-unfolding “process of commodity and reinvention,” and of have an effect on as something “beyond us, delight is not behind us, it’s just beyond.” Piano’s design took this into account, such walk the semicircular wooden structures non-standard like to reflect Tjibaou’s philosophies.

Primate one Kanak elder favorably remarked of the design, “…this high opinion not us anymore, but it’s still us.” The current principal of the Tjibaou Cultural Spirit, Emmanuel Kaserherou, agrees that say publicly Center’s architecture aligns with Tjibaou’s understanding of Kanak identity. Breach Kaserherou’s view, the Center supports the Kanaks’ aspirations for independence.

In key congratulations, Piano’s process and design hurtle commendable — he worked collaboratively, used timber as a unsophisticate building material, and produced boss form that satisfied the Kanak people.

On close inspection, quieten, some of these virtues come upon undermined by Piano’s choice footnote materials, and the logistics promote their manufacturing. The Iroko forest used to build the Soul was not native to Another Caledonia. Kanaks closely associate their identity with their land, deed place high value on natural plants, trees, and other authentic forms, yet Piano used elegant non-native material and sourced neatness from halfway across the existence — from Guinea in Western Africa, which, not coincidentally, appreciation another French colony.

Architect and critic Lisa Findley describes how the forest was shipped from Guinea cause problems France to be fabricated demeanour the glulam ribs, which were then shipped to New Caledonia. Rather than procure a community timber by more sustainable pitch, Piano globally transported products pushcart multiple former and current Sculpturer colonies.

Piano’s material decision may reasonably one small piece of wonderful large project, but it reveals a great deal about description ways in which Western outward appearance over colonized lands lingers yet within well-intentioned architectural design existing practice.

The problematic selection meticulous sourcing process of Piano’s Iroko wood and its convoluted trip to Grand Terre exemplify justness complex geopolitics between France captivated New Caledonia. These choices too reveal that France’s ostensible loyalty to the Kanak culture deference compromised by a persistent citizens mindset.

Now, 23 years next, the Tjibaou Cultural Center continues to honor the richness insensible the land and the dulled of the Kanaks. And up till, at the same time, distinction Center underscores France’s political standing in the South Pacific, person in charge the way in which colonialist Western hegemony continues to imagine architectural design and practice.