SUPER-PACIFIC-CITY - The Lomipeau Speculation

Lomipeau is a legend of the Pacific. According to oral traditions, Lomipeau was a giant double-hulled Tongan canoe that was built in the 16th Century. It was capable of carrying four thousand men and many tons of rocks. It was so large that the volcanic islands of Kao and Tofua could pass between the two hulls. Although Lomipeau’s main function was to transport limestone from Uvea to Tonga for the purpose of tomb building, its significance was beyond that of a functional vessel, as it also demonstrated Tongan capability and authority over islands both within and beyond its imperial borders.

The oral history of Lomipeau might not constitute a conventionally authoritative historical source. This is especially so, as the story lacks detailed descriptions of how the giant canoe was constructed and how it was sailed. However, the legend of this gigantic vessel provokes and legitimates speculations of architectural formations at a scale never realised before in the Pacific. In this context Lomipeau can be seen as the genesis of a Pacific tectonic complex that is capable of constructing urbanism.

This thesis looked to expand the potential of architectural operations identified in Lomipeau and other oceanic sources into experimental architectural research. This research aims to challenge the common perception that Pacific tectonics are only relevant for the construction of temporary huts, shelters and small canoes - artifacts seen as only appropriate for museum display. It aims to project the confining and commodified imagery of Pacific tectonics to an extreme new future, launching an urban scale speculation of Pacific tectonics.

This thesis makes use of Austin’s syntax translations as a ‘process-mechanism’. Analysis of historical precedents as ‘original archetypes’ initiate a translation process through making that maintain the persistent syntax while demonstrating new architectural conditions. This process involves:

— The identification of historical Pacific archetypes that best represent Pacific tectonic systems. Significant features are extracted and identified as syntactical elements.

— Syntax is used as the tectonic driver for the regulation of subsequent making processes. The aim is to create new models which maintain the syntax in new conditions while forming new components of a wider explorative development.

— The outcomes from the making process are termed ‘prototypes’. These are a collection of folly-like proto-architecture that are potentially architecturally operative. They are not to scale and functionless, but can later be transformed into buildings or building components, in order to accommodate specific programmes.

The tectonic experiments eventually generated a palette of prototypes that test the translation process. These prototypes do not specifically acquire direct formal and symbolic expression, they develop syntactic propositions that are to be used for the designing of tectonic structures that have not existed before.

The completed project takes the form of a speculated city which demonstrates Pacific architectonics being translated into an urban scale. The author speculates a scenario in which an autonomous district, the Pacific autonomous district of Lomipeau at Aotearoa’s Rangitaiki Plain, is reserved for a research-based city. In this district, experimental making is engaged to develop a tectonic system that is responsive to the challenging future of the Pacific, threatened by natural disasters and climate change, by utilising traditional Pacific architectural syntax.

The  Pacific autonomous district of Lomipeau (or Lomipeau City, Pacific City) is initially proposed to accept the displaced citizens across the Pacific. It will also provide a strong motivation for the Pacific’s future developments, by  reconstructing the mythical Lomipeau based on a contemporary motivation, and incorporating Pacific tectonics to practise ‘canoe making’ as the genesis of a new Pacific civilisation. Eventually, the city will challenge the static notion of cities which are completely passive to the active oceanic environment.

The city provides a series of programmes including housing, infrastructure, manufacturing and community facilities. Lomipeau is itself a giant waka-like structure, reimagined from Tongan mythology, which is also the mobile part of the city. The mobility of Lomipeau demonstrates that a new form of voyages can be invented. It allows the fabrication facility to reach into the sea, completing new tasks in the vast ocean. This activity is called the grand voyager and is completely different from the past meanings of voyages. It functions as a moving ‘making-ground’ that recreates a tectonic system across the Pacific, reconnecting the ocean as a holistic entity.

What makes Norman Wei's 'Pacific City' such a formidable project is the author's ability to meld story from both faux historical context and faux technological reality, and present it as vast dramatic tableaux. 

The thesis as a construct requires that we suspend disbelief and transcend a spectrum of epochs. Creating a historical context from the myth of Lomipeau, Wei develops an architectonic language based on an ontological and technical analysis of 'a Pacific architecture' ( in reality a multi-layered phenomenon) and creates a narrative which presents and tests these elements. 

This is a cinematic proposal and a Janusian gateway into a future promulgated from insight of how the past can transform and manifest itself forward. Wei's vehicle for this investigation and expression, 'The Pacific Autonomous District of Lomipeau', set on the edge of the Canterbury Plains in the South Island of New Zealand, is a speculated research city founded on the principle of the the grand voyagers of the Pacific. It is the platform, both figurative and literal, for the recovery, development and creation of new resilient architecture to be disseminated throughout the Pacific region being transformed by extreme climate and sea level rise.

The rigour, completeness and consistency of Wei’s vision may be read off the visually stunning presentation which offers us a beacon of what can be: a door opening onto possibility. 

— Jeremy Treadwell, supervisor