In taking on the 'generic' form of the meeting house one must be aware of the "original and continuing violence within and beneath the landscape"^[1] Linzey describes culture in 'Post Colonial Aotearoa' as being at fault, a bi-culture. Architecture in such an atmosphere can only be prophetic, the result of which is an uneasy 'seismic folding of languages'.^[2] In order to achieve an architectonic dialogue the 'never yet visible or Riss or crack' is slightly widened and separate languages are derived from the 'original' form. I have developed separate systems and hence the possibility of dialogue in a western sense(?). This possibility however can never be brought to fruition The only result is an uneasy stilted silence bearing witness to 'differance'. The result is the house of non-dialogue, a perverse prison for language and images. The resulting architecture is similar to the city described by Camus in 'The Plague' - a city that looks in on itself but 'sees' neither itself nor its surroundings as a consequence, it lives in the realm of memory.

Translation, whether it be spoken and/or written language or between architectures involves a repetition of the same or reduplication of identity but at the same time the translation contains within itself, always, a crucial infinitesimal difference. There are three known versions of the Treaty of Waitangi - The original in English, a Maori translation, and a further translation from the Maori back into English. Although one would like to think of these as exact 'copies' they, in reality, bear the unutterable burden of that which was 'left absent'.^[3] The drawings themselves, as representations bear witness in a similar way. By using the axonometric view (for example), the 'unnatural view', I have attempted to carry the simulacra 'from the dialectic of alienation to the giddiness of transparency'. The resulting architecture is replete with space, the 'separate' architectonics seemingly independent are irrevocably intertwined.

This house has twenty-six cells and there are twenty-six unique columns. Together they comprise both one system and many systems. The privileged view is forever unsettled by the possibility of the return of the 'other'. At the interface between these systems images, documents, and icons 'dwell', their potency quelled by their being 'encrypted'. They are nevertheless the artifice of difference.^[4]

"I've got nothing to say man, I said I've got nothing to say..."^[5]