Citation de jean-marie tjibaou cultural local tribe

2021 Workshop

The Nation territory of New Caledonia, come to an end ecologically and culturally rich eyot in the South Pacific, quite good home to the native Kanaks. The French colonized the Kanaks and their lands in honourableness mid-19th century, claiming the inside islands and relegating the endemic population to smaller reservations put off the archipelago’s periphery.

The Kanaks first demanded independence in glory 1960s. Their leader was Jean-Marie Tjibaou, son of a Kanak chief and champion of primacy pro-independence Kanak movement for many decades. Tjibaou envisioned a drunk Kanak presence in the French-populated regions of the islands, especially in Nouméa, the capital pole largest city of New Caledonia.

In 1975, Tjibaou organized regular cultural festival, Melanesia 2000, with the hopes of reinforcing Kanak identity through expressions of catalogue culture. The festival seeded excellence idea of a permanent traditional center. Although Tjibaou was assassinated in 1989, the center unquestionable envisioned eventually became a fact.

The Tjibaou Cultural Center was built at the very sector of Melanesia 2000 and bears Tjibaou’s name.

While it was Tjibaou who initiated the idea cut into a cultural center, the game was primarily commissioned and funded by the French government. Integrity government’s motive, at least increase twofold part, was to ease common and political tensions between honesty Kanaks and the French settlers in the wake of Tjibaou’s murder.

President François Mitterrand went so far as to optate the center one of consummate grands projets, the only pooled outside mainland France. The Feelings stands now as a prompt remember of France’s continued presence acquit yourself the Southern hemisphere, where timehonoured simultaneously promotes Kanak culture viewpoint reinforces France’s continued hegemony.

The Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia stands as a reminder warning sign France’s continued presence in goodness Southern hemisphere.

The French government embarked on building the Center alter 1991, siting it, according cancel Tjibaou’s vision, on New Caledonia’s main island Grand Terre, giving the Tina peninsula.

An ubiquitous architectural competition was won close to Renzo Piano and his fixed idea, Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Piano’s design process was collaborative. Monarch team worked not only hang together Tjibaou’s widow, Marie-Claude Tjibaou, on the other hand also with Kanak elders, chimp well as Alban Bensa, a-okay French cultural anthropologist and Kanak culture expert, and employees long-awaited the Agency for the Awaken of Kanak Culture.

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

These houses falsified circular, made with wooden battens and a central pole supportive a heavy thatch-covered conical covering. Piano’s interpretation was to copy semi-circular enclosures made of Iroko wood that was manufactured meet by chance vertical glulam ribs. Horizontal slats hold the ribs together polished steel connectors, and the essay is topped with a on the bias sliced-off roof.

Ten such enclosures, varying in height from 65 to 91 feet, create extravaganza space, performance venues, libraries, favour other amenities. Each structure decline placed along a curvilinear follow landscaped with native plants other trees.

Piano’s design also alludes denote Tjibaou’s distinct vision of Kanak identity.

Tjibaou spoke of Kanak culture as an ongoing, ever-unfolding “process of invention and reinvention,” and of identity as indicate “beyond us, it is plead for behind us, it’s just beyond.” Piano’s design took this jerk account, such that the raised wooden structures seem to mention Tjibaou’s philosophies. As one Kanak elder favorably remarked of righteousness design, “…this is not disgraceful anymore, but it’s still us.” The current director of position Tjibaou Cultural Center, Emmanuel Kaserherou, agrees that the Center’s framework aligns with Tjibaou’s understanding methodical Kanak identity.

In Kaserherou’s materialize, the Center supports the Kanaks’ aspirations for independence.

Renzo Piano’s information decisions reveal a great covenant about the ways in which Western influence over colonialized property property law lingers.

In key respects, Piano’s shape and design are commendable — he worked collaboratively, used forest as a natural building fabric, and produced a form give it some thought satisfied the Kanak people.

Speedy close inspection, however, some a number of these virtues are undermined mass Piano’s choice of materials, post the logistics of their developed. The Iroko wood used undertake build the Center was keen native to New Caledonia. Kanaks closely associate their identity get the gist their land, and place towering value on native plants, sheltered, and other life forms, so far Piano used a non-native counsel and sourced it from incompletely across the globe — escape Guinea in West Africa, which, not coincidentally, is another Gallic colony.

Architect and critic Lisa Findley describes how the forest was shipped from Guinea access France to be fabricated be accepted the glulam ribs, which were then shipped to New Caledonia. Rather than procure a resident timber by more sustainable road, Piano globally transported products examination multiple former and current Land colonies.

Piano’s material decision may aptitude one small piece of fastidious large project, but it reveals a great deal about significance ways in which Western import over colonized lands lingers unchanging within well-intentioned architectural design ride practice.

The problematic selection folk tale sourcing process of Piano’s Iroko wood and its convoluted tour to Grand Terre exemplify ethics complex geopolitics between France celebrated New Caledonia. These choices additionally reveal that France’s ostensible dedication to the Kanak culture review compromised by a persistent magnificent mindset.

Now, 23 years subsequent, the Tjibaou Cultural Center continues to honor the richness quite a few the land and the discernment of the Kanaks. And up till, at the same time, representation Center underscores France’s political state in the South Pacific, pointer the way in which colonialist Western hegemony continues to faculty architectural design and practice.