Constructed landscape with lightweight architecture from Micro-urbanism: the Maori pā and architecture as a generative landscape by Amanda Yates

What resonated most is a series of Maori design principles shared by Amanda Yates and Shaun Awatere:

1. Kotahitanga – Cohesion and collaboration. Collective cooperative and effective partnerships and collaboration with community.
2. Wairuatanga – Embedded emotion and spirit.  
   Everything should support our spiritual well being and consciousness. Emotional connection with the environment that links people.
3. Manaakitanga – Hospitality and security.
   Embracing and welcoming visitors, and protection and security of community.
4. Whanaugatanga – Participation and membership in the community and social setting
5. Kaitiakitanga – Sustainable resource management. Protection of significant landscape features and natural enviornment.
6. Rangatiratanga – Leadership, identity, self-determination. Community can lead and take responsibility for creating and determining their own future.
7. Matauranga – Knowledge and understanding. Understanding of community history, identities, character.
8. Orangatanga – Maintain health and well being
9. Mauritanga – Essence or life-force of a natural environment. To identify and promote the maintenance or restoration of a mauri (the life force which all objects contain). e.g. rain-tank collection systems, grey-water recycling systems, passive solar design.

In addition to enjoying the presentations, this was the first event I attended with the Livescribe, an amazing pen/paper system that records notes as you take them and allows you to play them back. Both the presentations and my full notes with audio are available online:

• Amanda Yates, registered architect and academic: Micro-urbanism: the Maori pā and architecture as a generative landscape PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Shaun Awatere (Ngati Porou) is a resource economist: Developing Maori urban design principles PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Wiki Walker, Ngati Hine, Manukau City Council Environmental Policy Planner (tangata whenua): Tangata Whenua and the landscape PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Ngarimu Blair, is a Trustee on the Ngati Whatua o Orakei Maori Trust Board: Orakei papakainga PDF, Livescribe pencast

Further reading: Ngā hua papakāinga: Habitation design principles by Shadrach Rolleston and Shaun Awatere

Today marks the 40th anniversary of man’s landing on the moon, and I keep having flashbacks. Not to July 20, 1968 — I wasn’t born yet — to October 17, 2008, when I helped bring the Apollo 13 crew safely back to Earth. At least fictionally.

Generally, I don’t have a great rap as a theatre date. Except to the people waiting outside for a chance to take over my seat at intermission. All too often I’m painfully aware I’m in a cramped coach seat watching characters wrapped up in a drama I couldn’t care less about. But Apollo 13: Mission Control hooked me before I even entered the theatre.

Outside, a replica of the Saturn V rocket commanded our attention, and as we queued awaiting the doors to open, the astronauts descended the staircase and entered the capsule before our very eyes. We cheered them on then entered the theatre control room.

Instead of rows, we had consoles. Where we chose to sit determined our roles. I was in charge of boosters, my date manned monitor 17. Each one was a masterpiece of fiddly controls and blinking lights, monitors we could switch between feeds of the astronauts and instruments.

Apollo 13 was intended to be the third mission to carry humans to the surface of the Moon, but an explosion of one of the oxygen tanks and resulting damage to other systems resulted in the mission being aborted before the planned lunar landing could take place. (Thanks, NASA.) In this version, it’s up to us to safely return the crew to Earth.

I had only been in New Zealand a couple of months when I saw Apollo 13, but sitting at the console in Mission Control, I felt like I was back in the United States. The U.S. of inspiring dreams, the home of the brave and land of the free, the best and the brightest. Not the October 2008 U.S. of economic collapse, “enhanced interrogation,” and Sarah Palin as quite possibly the next Vice President.

Perhaps this could only be created by outsiders – New Zealanders Kip Chapman and Brad Knewstubb, inspired by a replica control room used for the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Chapman told the New Zealand Herald, “We were worried about that because who are we to tell the story? But it’s such an interesting story and a universal story of survival so why shouldn’t we tell it?”

I’m so glad they did. The accents, haircuts and details were spot on. The sweat, the adrenaline, the excitement – so real. The only sweet giveaway that we were not in Houston was the big map with New Zealand in the center instead of, well, cropped off the right edge.

Apollo 13: mission Control stands out for originality, creativity and geeky passion. By far the most fun I’ve had in a theatre in years. It won’t be long before you can see it in the U.S. – they need it over there! In the meantime, people of Hamilton and Auckland, New Zealand, – don’t miss “Apollo 13: Mission Control“

Hamilton:
July 20 – 26, 8pm
The Meteor, Hamilton
Bookings TicketDirect
Auckland:
July 31 – August 15 (no shows Sunday and Monday)
Lower NZI Theatre, Aotea Centre, The Edge, Auckland
Bookings TicketDirect

In Greek mythology, Iris is a goddess who unites sky and sea as a rainbow and unites heaven and earth as a messenger of the Olympian gods. In Tibet, Iris Reticulata is the most glorious flower growing wild on the plateau. At over 14,000 ft above sea level, Iris wastes no energy shooting up stems. Instead, it spreads out its violet and gold treasures as soon as it emerges through the ground.

But Tibet has not seen much “Harmony” in almost sixty years of Chinese occupation. In the words of The Dalai Lama, “genuine harmony must come from the heart, it cannot come from the barrel of a gun.” With six million Tibetans and 1.3 billion Chinese, it’s easy to feel hopeless about the Tibetan plight. But the Tibetan right to automony is a winning cause, and with the whole world watching, Tibet and friends outnumber China 5 to 1.

If you’d like to count with Tibet and the whole world, sign the petition to Chinese President Hu Jintao, requesting restraint and respect for human rights and to open meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. In the words of Mohandas Gandhi, another wise leader through nonviolence,”Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.” Or in other words… better to be an Iris than a Cassandra.

We enter the film through an apparent crime scene into the world of on old man looking back on his life with regret and a desire for revenge. Thomas (Toto) believes he was switched in a nursery fire with Alfred, the boy next door. As a result, he sees Alfred as living the life he was meant to have, and we get to see both his reality and the fantasy life he imagines was his birthright.

His biography unfolds as we travel back and forth between different periods of his life, played by 3 different actors. Thomas’s jealousy and sense of being a victim shape choices that create cascades of loss and keep him from enjoying his life and the love that surrounds him. Even though his trajectory seems semitragic, van Dormael takes us on a joyful and humorous ride through imagination, memory and absurdity to a surprisingly happy ending (that includes a plastic bag scene much more beautiful than the one it must have inspired in American Beauty).

After the film, Terry came back out for questions and answers. When asked if he ever wanted to be someone else. “No,” he replied, “I guess I’m rather content being miserable being me.”

He said his visual style had been most influenced by “watching the radio” as he grew up. He was left to his own imagination to flesh out the stories until TV arrived home at age 12.

He also joked he was threatening legal action against George Bush and Dick Cheney for the unauthorized remake of Brazil — we’re living it!

assorted related:

Ikiru makes an interesting contrast and complement to Toto Le Heros on the “get busy living” theme.

The new Bob Thurman Podcast from his talk in Thimphu, Bhutan on “Buddhism, Gross National Happiness and the Current Global Crisis,” (Don’t you just love the scope?) resonates with themes that emerge in Toto le Heros and Terry’s talk like “what is the nature of reality,” “how to be happy” and “time, eh… not so linear,” and offers a useful realization.

Not so into the inevitability of your current body aging and dying? Aubrey de Grey explains how he’s approaching the issue as an “engineering problem” in the latest TedTalks. Alas, solving that “problem” creates a whole host of new issues that portend a rather dystopian universe, but then we are granted more time to figure that all out.

Terry Gilliam obtains the rights to Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens for a groat. (Yay! Looking forward to this movie…)

Luckily, we have a new tool for scouting interstellar real estate opportunities: the Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium. This is the gadget I fantasized about while lying on the beach, looking up at the sky and wishing I had paid more attention during astronomy class. Well, actually, I imagined Terminator vision where the data just showed up in my retina, but this is so much better since it doesn’t require any cyborg implants. You can look at anything in the sky through this handheld device and it tells you what you’re looking at and offers related history and mythology. You can also tell it what celestial object you want to look at, and it will direct you to where in the sky you’ll find it. It also gives constellation tours and a list of the night’s greatest hits based on where you are and what time of year it is. Simply wondrous!

Technorati Tags: geography, astronomy, google earth, gadgets, mapping