I ka wa ma mua, I ka wa ma hope
"It is as if the Hawaiian stands firmly in the present, with his back to the future, and his eyes fixed upon the past, seeking historical answers for present-day dilemmas." (Kameʻeleihiwa, 1992)
This chapter develops an architectural design approach for the Kanaka ‘Oiwi concept of wā as an expansive philosophy connecting land, ocean, people, the cosmos, time, and more. Wā has many meanings in Olelo ‘Oiwi with the most widely accepted interpretation as a space between two objects and a space between two points of time. Wā is spatio-temporal. It may designate a specific moment in time and place or the continuity of past, present, and future as in the proverb above. To think of the term, wa’a, one might consider the hull of the canoe as the space in between; thus wā becomes a space that carries us across geographies and temporalities. Why does wā matter within the design of place?
Ika wa ma mua, I ka wa ma hope, asks for balance, we look back five generations to understand how to provide five generations into the future; it is at the heart of not only cultural continuity but also environmental sustainability. Wā is relational, creating symmetrical relationships between human and non-human worlds.
In connecting time, space, land, and humans, the ‘Oiwi concept of deep-time known as mo’oku’auhau is useful in engaging wā with place-making. Mo’oku’auhau is generally understood as one’s genealogy, but applied to a specific place, it can be interpreted as the genealogy of place, including the stories of human and non-human activity that have taken place on the land as well as the interconnected genealogies of those entities and their relationships. Place becomes an intensified and expansive when we look to it through the lens of mo’oku’auhau.
The chapter explores the application of these concepts within the design methodology and approach to ongoing projects in Hawai’i and Aelon Kein Ad. Applying these philosophical notions to design engages us with our ancestry and our own genealogies, it creates the foundation for Indigenous design knowledges of Hawai’i and more broadly, Moana. Spatial design centered within wā creates places that are connected within a deeper system of Vā Moana.
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