Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts

Archipelogics: Indo-Pacific indigeneities

Anoma Pieris, Jayde Lin Roberts, Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:38:51 +1300

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Stories from the antechamber: Settler perceptions of Indigenous presence at Kelaniya Royal Temple

Anoma Pieris — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:46:11 +1300

Are the modalities of asserting Sinhala cultural hegemony Lanka (Sri Lanka) settler colonial practices; and if not, how might we explain them? Using a Buddhist temple complex as a single case study, this article asks what visual representations of Sinhala pasts in Lanka’s revered Buddhist architectures reveal about settler processes. The article studies paintings in the Kelaniya Royal Temple located north of Colombo, contrasting the cartoon style artwork of the eighteenth-century image house with the more recent twentieth-century murals by acclaimed artist Solias Mendis. The article traces how Buddhist jātaka stories, founding myths, and historical narratives entwine in constructing Sinhala political authority and cultural claims on the island’s geography, and how, by doing so, these claims marginalise knowledges of prior Indigenous inhabitants. Sovereignty is imagined through both oceanic and riverine geographies to different ends.

Beyond the fixed: Sāmoan digital spaces, errantry, and decolonising architecture

Karamia Müller — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:51:03 +1300

This article examines how siapo, vā, diaspora, and digital practice converge to produce an interior without ground: a digital space not anchored by built form or territorial enclosure, yet lined, activated, and sustained through relation. It argues that online siapo produced and circulated by Sāmoan women constitutes a form of spatial production. Drawing on hashtag analysis of fifty social-media posts, the article shows how captions, tags, and circulation extend embodied cultural knowledge into digital environments and organise relations among identity, family, memory, and place. Édouard Glissant’s concepts of errantry and relation are placed in dialogue with vā to theorise diasporic movement without reducing it to rootlessness or exile. Online siapo thereby exposes the colonial categories through which architectural knowledge has privileged fixity, material permanence, and territorial ground, while offering a Sāmoan relational account of architecture as spatial practice.

A place for Indigenous articulation: A Kacalisian slate house in the Pingtung County Library

Zuzule Demalalade , Jayde Lin Roberts — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:55:08 +1300

In 2020, when the city of Pingtung in southern Taiwan decided to upgrade their county library, a slate house that had been previously installed began to transform from a specimen haphazardly collected to display Indigenous culture to a place for reconsidering Indigeneity. Whereas the municipal officials and Indigenous peoples who originally assembled the slate house inside the old library seemed unconcerned about the significance of home in Rukai/Paiwan culture, the re-design transformed a hidden relic into a place for Indigenous articulation. Through the materiality of the slate house, this article investigates Indigeneity as a “generative, sociomythic tradition” that allows for pragmatic retrieval of practices and stories that can produce alternative futures.

Bure: Spiritual romance

Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:57:52 +1300

Fijian bure are products of spirituality and romance. These two motivations, or ‘cultural authority,’ have shaped bure over time. At the time of writing, a Fijian bure refers to a thatched building built in the local style applying Indigenous building technologies and plant materials. Cultural authority is a cross-cultural architectural concept that refers to the intent behind the design and meaning of buildings. Often it relates to the expert and their expertise which informs and shapes the architectural practice. Early Fijian bure relied on spiritual stimuli that influenced the foundations, its layout of structural posts, and thus its form. The tourist bure, on the other hand, is motivated by romance—a loaded term that refers to the negotiation between client demands, expectations of tourists, and the romanticisation of Fijian architectural forms. This article explores the stark understandings of Fijian bure which are folkloristic for both past and present societies.

Archipelagic memories at Lau King Howe Hospital Memorial Museum

Catherine Mei Min Woo, Anoma Pieris — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:01:01 +1300

Colonial pasts, geopolitical differences, and plural social constructions of Malaya/post-independence Malaysia contributed to and were reflected in hospital design. Sarawak in East Malaysia, on Borneo Island, saw developments that paralleled those in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. How did the multi-ethnic complexity of the patient demographic impact post-independence medical institutions? Situating this research in the region’s medical developments, this article explores hospital museums as repositories for institutional memories. Examples discussed include the urban Sarawak General Hospital in Kuching—a colonial, later government, institution in the East Malaysian capital, and the Lau King Howe Hospital Memorial Museum in Sibu—a regional hospital built with Chinese philanthropic funds. The article argues that, when compared with the general hospital, which is part of an urban network of medical institutions linking West and East Malaysia, the museum best conveys Sarawak’s riverine, regional, and multivocal memories, reflective of its multi-ethnic reality. The article describes these as archipelagic memories.

Hulihia: Learning from the Kauhale in times of transformation

James Miller — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:05:03 +1300

This article explores the persistence of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) spatial intelligences, specifically the kauhale (village), against the backdrop of Hawaiʻi’s housing crisis and settler-colonial property regimes. Tracing the historical transition of Kalihi, Honolulu—from traditional ahupuaʻa (land division) to multi-ethnic plantation “camps” that maintained communal, relational living—the paper highlights the enduring nature of Indigenous place-knowing. By examining contemporary Hawaiian architectural and kīpuka aloha ‘āina (places of cultural resurgence and Indigenous refusal), the article argues for a paradigm shift in housing policy. It advocates for collective land tenure and adaptive building codes that restore housing as a living, reciprocal relationship with ‘āina (land).

Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory, ed. Paul Memmott, John Ting, Tim O’Rourke, and Marcel Vellinga

Lorenza Lazzati — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:09:49 +1300

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Indigenous Architecture in India: Exploring Plural Lifeworlds, ed. Gauri Bharat

Anoma Pieris — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:12:16 +1300

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Beyond the view from above: Re-reading the Pacific airfield

Emily Kim — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:15:10 +1300

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Biographies

Issue Editor — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:17:42 +1300

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Colophon

Issue Editor — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:19:45 +1300

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