The buildings notice me considers the reciprocal relationship between our built environment and lived experience in resonance with the Tuhoe whakataukī, ‘Ka hanga whare te tangata, ka hanga tangata te whare’ – the people shape the whare, the whare shapes the people. In this illustrated presentation, Rebecca Kiddle director of Te Manawahoukura Rangahau Institute at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, responds to this theme drawing on her research exploring the meeting point of community creation, social processes, and urban design. Kiddle considers such questions as: how might a built space shape us to progress or regress politically, socially, culturally, environmentally?; what do these spaces look like?; and, what do they ask of us?

Rebecca Kiddle (Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi) is current director of Te Manawahoukura Rangahau Institute at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. With a background in urban design and urbanism, Kiddle currently leads the Marsden research project Making Aotearoa Places: The Politics and Practice of Urban Māori Place-making and is a Kāhui member on another focused on Nature-based Urban design for Wellbeing and Adaptation in Oceania. She is the co-author of the award-winning, best seller Imagining Decolonisation (BWB, 2020) and co-editor of Our Voices: indigeneity and architecture (Novato: California, 2018) with First Nations academics and architects, Kevin O’Brien and Patrick Luugigyoo Stewart.