a lily at the table.

More than a just a simple renovation, the accumulation of the journey is expressed through the condensing of nine key stories from my experience retracing the steps of my grandfather throughout the research of this thesis. These nine stories are located across State Highway 2 from Masterton to Wellington based on poignant moments of family, local histories central to the Wairarapa and the Chinese communities that helped shape it. The importance of the nine stories comes from the process of Chinese bai-san mourning rituals which includes a series of nine bows along a pilgrimage of grave cleaning and ties back to mahjong through the eight flower tiles with the "ninth" tile being a lily tile as a gift for my grandfather.

The house and garage of the existing Masterton Cancer Society becomes lifted with a new lower level providing additional space. This allowed the sense of journeying to be more fully expressed and carried through the circulation of the scheme, much as rising incense smoke carries the possibility of communing with ancestors, it becomes a way of combining the routine and the spiritual. Having located my grandfather’s library in the elevated garage, it opened up as double story volume with stair and mezzanine where, enlarged in this way, it becomes capable of expanding and holding the books and stories of many others. 

Across the research, tables and chairs came to the fore as key to playing Mahjong but also as a way of marking place for others and holding time. In the intervention in Masterton, part of the new lower floor is given over to furniture making and crafting for anyone from the community to share in. This smaller scale making is paralleled in a series of furniture-scaled cabinets and fixtures within the building, each emblematic of the nine dreamed spaces and their manner of holding time. 

Where moment from across the journey become drivers for moments within the architecture, the project thus has sought to capture the journey of life geographically and architecturally. Its play of scales has therefore sought to make present absences and affections central to life; linking life-turning events to the immediacy of haptic, tactile contact and comfort.