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Abstract
It is not without irony that in Apia, Western Samoa’s capital, architecture became more “westernised” since Samoa gained independence in 1962. In these decades, architecture has tended towards a ubiquitous modernism without reflection of regional culture. On the other hand, architects have used the fale, the Samoan house, as a superficial image added to buildings. The former Government Building on Beach Road represented this attitude, with a fale-formed structure on top of an otherwise strictly modernist office building. When European explorers discovered the Pacific Islands to European eyes, they shaped an enduring image of the South Seas as a paradisiac region. Such a view persisted in the literature well into the twentieth century. The Samoan fale in its functionality and beauty seemed to carry aspects of this image. Taking into account the complex, even contradictory, reality of architecture in Samoa, with the tufuga faifale’s exclusive tradition of building the fale tele, with customary fale buildings diverging from the traditional form and with foreign architects responding to the appearance and climatic functionality of the fale, this paper attempts to read more recent buildings against examples of colonial architecture from the turn of the twentieth century, investigating how foreign architects used the appearance or the climatic functionality of the fale to inform their architecture in Samoa. The hypothesis of this paper is that colonial architecture, while not interested in the image of the fale, adopted some of its functional principles, whereas its imagability tended to replace its principles in the construction of more recent buildings.
Notes
1. Albert L. Refiti, “Mavae and Tofiga. Spatial Exposition of the Samoan Cosmogeny and Architecture,” PhD diss. Auckland University of Technology, 2014, 2. The imminent question of why Krämer and Te Rangi Hiroa were able to receive precise information on how fale were built if this knowledge was sacred will need to remain open for now.
2. Rem Koolhaas has repeatedly spoken of the victory of modern architecture as having become a sort of global vernacular.
3. The author is grateful for the reviewers’ pertinent questions that have aided the clarification of positions and also of identifying questions that have to remain open for the time being.
4. Anne E. Guernsey Allen, “Samoan Fale Spatial Organisation,” in The Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, ed. Paul Oliver (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), 1221. Also, Anne E. Guernsey Allen, “Architecture as Social Expression in Western Samoa: Axioms and Models,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 5, no. 1 (1993), 33–45.
5. Refiti, “Mavae and Tofiga,” 199–200.
6. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, A Voyage Round the World, i.e. Voyage Autor du Monde, trans. John Reinhold Forster (London: Nourse and Davies, 1772), 244–5.
7. Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1768–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 25, quoting de Bougainville, A Voyage Round the World, 228–9.
8. Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1–4.
9. Bernard Smith, Imagining the Pacific in the Wake of the Cook Voyages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
10. Smith, Imagining the Pacific, 179.
11. Hermann Joseph Hiery, Die Deutsche Südsee 1884–1914. Ein Handbuch (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001); see also Robert Louis Stevenson, A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, 1892, reprint with an introduction by Malama Meleisea (Auckland: Pasifika Press, 1996).
12. Hermann Joseph Hiery, “Die Deutschen in der Südsee. Ein Überblick,” in Emil Nolde. Expedition in die Südsee, ed. Magdalena M. Moeller (Munich: Hirmer; Berlin: Brücke-Archiv, 2002), 13–34, here 25.
13. Titles include: Otto Ehlers, Samoa, die Perle der Südsee (Berlin: Paetel, 1900); Richard Deeken, Manuia Samoa. Samoanische Reiseskizzen und Beobachtungen (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1901); Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Samoa. Bismarckarchipel und Neuguinea (Leipzig: Weber, 1902).
14. Augustin Krämer, Die Samoa-Inseln. Entwurf einer Monographie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung Deutsch-Samoas, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Schweizerbart 1902–1903). These precious volumes appeared in the English translation only in 1994–1995, translated into English by Theodore Verhaaren (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1994; Auckland: Polynesian Press, 1994–1995).
15. Krämer was later appointed Professor of Ethnology and founded the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1919. Krämer published further books about Oceania: Augustin Krämer, Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa: meine zweite Südseereise 1897–1899 zum Studium der Atolle und ihrer Bewohner (Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder, 1906); Elisabeth Krämer-Bannow, Bei kunstsinnigen Kannibalen der Südsee. Wanderungen auf Neu-Mecklenburg 1908–09 (Berlin: Reimer, 1916); Augustin Krämer, Salamasina. Bilder aus altsamoanischer Kultur und Geschichte (Berlin: Strecker & Schröder, 1916). The 11-volume work from his expedition to the South Pacific was published under the title Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908–1910 by the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung (Hamburg: Friedrichsen, De Gruyter & Co.), between 1917 and 1938.
16. ‘Hier befestigte sich aber auch in mir der Vorsatz, sogar auf Kosten meiner naturwissenschaftlichen Studien etwas mehr in den Dienst der Ethnologie zu treten, als ich ursprünglich beabsichtigte, da sie ja zweifelsohne eine Unterstützung viel notwendiger hat. Ist doch das geistige Eigentum jener Naturvölker viel reicher, als man vielfach anzunehmen geneigt ist!’ Krämer, Die Samoa-Inseln, vol. 1, 2. Translation by author.
17. Around 30 years later, further knowledge and understanding of Samoan culture was provided through Te Rangi Hiroa’s work: Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), Samoan Material Culture, Berenice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 75 (Honolulu, HI: Berenice P. Bishop Museum, 1930).
18. Krämer, Samoa Islands II, 260. It needs to be added here that, as so often, translation is vexing: Krämer wrote Naturvolk which Theodore Verhaaren translated as “primitive people.” As much as this is not wrong, it adds a deprecatory tone while Naturvolk might literally be translated as “natural people” – a phrase that contains both a notion of distance (“we are more civilised”) and of Rousseau-like appreciation (“they are more natural than we are”).
19. See Christoph Schnoor, “Reshaping of Paradise: Wilhelm Solf’s Town Redevelopment in Apia, Samoa,” Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 25, History in Practice, ed. David Beynon and Ursula de Jong (Geelong: SAHANZ, 2008), CD-ROM; and “Albert Schaaffhausen: A German Architect in Samoa, 1901–14,” Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 26, Cultural Crossroads, ed. Julia Gatley (Auckland: SAHANZ, 2009), CD-ROM.
20. See Annual Building Report “6. Nachweisung der zum Kaiserlichen Gouvernement von Samoa gehörenden Gebäude und Grundstücke,” under No. 26: “Land in Motoutua,” Files of the Former German Colonial Government, Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC), Samoa.
21. One early account of this struggle is given by Stevenson, A Footnote to History. Contemporary literature includes Malama Meleisea, Lagaga: A Short History of Western Samoa (Suva: University of the South Pacific, 1987); The Making of Modern Samoa, Malama Meleisea, ed. (Suva: University of the South Pacific, 1987); Samoa’s Journey: Aspects of History, Malama Meleisea, et al., eds. (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2012); and Die Deutsche Südsee 1884–1914. Ein Handbuch, Hermann Joseph Hiery, ed. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001).
22. Erich Schultz-Ewerth, Sprichwörtliche Redensarten der Samoaner (Apia: Luebke, 1906). These were translated into English and published as Alaga’upu fa’a Samoa (Auckland: Polynesian Press; Suva: University of the South Pacific, 1980).
23. Files of the former German Government in Samoa, Archives New Zealand, Wellington, file 6051-181-167. Translation by author.
24. See Endnote 23.
25. Files of the former German Government in Samoa, Archives New Zealand, Wellington, file 6051-181-166.
26. “Mr A. A. Willis has received the Appointment as Government Architect,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 1892.
27. And it is one of the very few surviving, indeed well-maintained houses from this time.
28. The term “foreign” (Fremde in German) was used by Governor Wilhelm Solf for the German, other European and American children, having borrowed this term from English usage. But it caused serious concern in the Colonial Office in Berlin. How dare the governor call Germans in Samoa “foreign”? It is remarkable the sharp wit with which Solf rejected making skin colour a criterion of a legal differentiation. In his reply to the officials in Berlin, he added with sarcasm that if they would not be called foreign, “furthermore people with coloured skin would be classed among the white people, so that Chinese, Japanese, half-castes and, for example, the negroes of the United States of America of which some live in Samoa, were indeed of coloured skin, but ‘white’ in legal terms.” With this argument, he made sure the name stayed “School for Foreign Children.” See the letter from Wilhelm Solf to Colonial Department in Berlin, June 16, 1906, German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv), Berlin, file R 1001/2759, 155.
29. Wilhelm Solf, letter of justification for the promotion of Albert Schaaffhausen, May 16, 1905, German Colonial Administration Files, Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC), Samoa (GCAS), IG-9, unpaginated.
30. Samoanische Zeitung 47, no. 7, November 23, 1907.
31. Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, 209.
32. Gary Pringle, “Heritage Assessment. Apia, Western Samoa,” MSc diss. University of Sydney, 1989, 61.
33. Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, 208.
34. Pringle, “Heritage Assessment,” 65.
35. Pringle, “Heritage Assessment,” 68. [Savali, October 30, 1981.] Norman Kirkcaldy was an Auckland-based architect who registered in 1975 with the NZRAB.
36. Pringle, “Heritage Assessment,” 68. [Savali, July 30, 1982.].
37. Zbigniew Marek Wolak, Polish architect, 1926–2008. Vetle Jørgensen, Danish architect, b. 1933, began his studies at the Academy in Copenhagen in 1953. He was employed for the United Nations in Western Samoa and designed the Aiavao House in Samoa. See http://issuu.com/martintairomaseghe/docs/buildesign_magazine_issue_008.
38. Z. M. Wolak and Vetle Jorgensen, House Types in Western Samoa, 1966–1968 (typescript), University of Queensland Library. There seems to have been a Danish edition with photographs and drawings. Wolak drew two master plans for the development of Apia, one in 1966 and another in 1968.
39. Wolak and Jorgensen, House Types in Western Samoa, 1–2.
40. Wolak and Jorgensen, House Types in Western Samoa, 3.
41. Pringle, “Heritage Assessment,” 61.
42. See “Beautification Plan for Apia’s Waterfront,” in Pacific Islands Monthly, December 1966, 135. This information has been confirmed by historian Lukasz Stanek (email-message to author, February 8, 2015).
43. “Public Works,” Samoa Times Souvenir Supplement, May 30, 1972.
44. “Opening of New Maota Fono,” Samoa Times, Supplement, June 9, 1972.
45. “Public Works in the Past 10 Years,” Savali 10, no. 68 (May 30, 1972), 4, 17.
46. Mr Aiavao, pers. conv. with author, February 19, 2015.
47. Refiti, “Mavae and Tofiga,” 224.
49. B. S. Saini, “Climate Derived Shelter and Settlement,” in Passive and Low Energy Ecotechniques: Proceedings of the Third International Plea Conference, ed. Arthur Bowen, Mexico City, Mexico, August 6–11, 1984, (Mexico City, 1985), 33.
50. The ground floor was changed considerably in 2012, when Aiavao’s second wife insisted that it be made more open and changed into one room, like a fale.
51. Samoa Observer, January 10, 2013: “Funded by China, the Tui Atua building, which opened last year, cost $33 million [WST]. It houses the offices of the Attorney General, the Electric Power Corporation (EPC), Samoa Water Authority, Agriculture and Fisheries, Ministry of the Environment and others.”
52. As per the original plan drawings.
53. Michael Rose, external adjunct to the New Zealand High Commission in Apia, pers. conv. with author, March 31, 2016.
54. Whitefield McQueen Irwin Alsop now form part of Group GSA architects.
56. Refiti, “Mavae and Tofiga,” 226.
57. See also Mike Austin, “The Mau Movement and the Model Villages in Samoa,” paper presented at Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Architecture of the British Empire and Commonwealth, the 13th Annual Conference of SAHANZ, Auckland, 1996.
58. See also Albert Refiti, “About, Around and Over It: Culture and Aspects of Pacific Architecture,” Log Illustrated 15 (2002), “The X Issue,” http://physicsroom.org.nz/archive/log/archive/15.
59. Albert Wendt, “Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body,” Span 42–43 (April–October 1996), 15–29, accessed August 9, 2016, http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wendt/tatauing.asp.
60. Wendt, “Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body,” 15–29.
61. See Endnote 60.
62. Wolfgang Welsch, “Transculturality – the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today,” in Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, eds. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (London: Sage 1999), 194–213, accessed August 10, 2016, http://www2.uni-jena.de/welsch/papers/W_Wlelsch_Transculturality.html.
63. Welsch, “Transculturality,” 194–213.