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On returning
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There is a vague idea that I will return ‘One Day.’ It’s not an intention, just an idea every traveller has.
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Byron Kinnaird, Melbourne
No, don’t think so, unless we get another Bush president. It’s appealing but changing back would be hard. I miss the thought of designing the sort of structures I think I would have been doing had I stayed – its very different to what I do in NYC. David Howell, New York
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Would love to. However, it seems that to live and work in New Zealand is to isolate yourself from the international scene. The trick would be to be based in NZ with all its beauty and innovative spirit and still be in touch with international opportunities. New Zealand is not only isolated geographically but also slightly economically. Daniel Lewis, London
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I fantasise about it.
Tim Greer, Sydney
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I’d like to, but am conscious of limited job opportunities in my field.
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, New York
I am rapidly gaining incredible experience of and understanding about the critical alignment of politics, finance and design that is required to face the drastic changes of an increasingly urbanised world with a changing climate. At some point I would love to be able to bring lessons learnt back to the homeland! Skye Duncan, New York
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Living in an old country
Stephen Cairns traverses migration, mobility, personal history and the sharing of knowledge as he considers the notion of New Zealandness. As a university professor one of my jobs is to examine PhD students. Recently
an unusually overt recognition of my New Zealandness. And I received it as
I conducted such an examination at a London university. The format for PhD
recognition from my UK-based colleagues of the seriousness of the disaster
examinations in the UK, as in many Commonwealth countries, involves a
that had befallen my home country. Everyone was well informed and reflected
“viva,” as it is colloquially known. This event lasts up to three hours and
sensitively on some aspect of this devastating event, be it the processes of
involves a robust discussion on as many aspects of the thesis as the
liquefaction of the soil under the city, the broken infrastructure, the collapse of
examiners’ energy allows and scepticism requires.
well-known buildings such as the cathedral or, of course, the dead, the injured
As with many formal events, the informal aspects of the examination are
and, at that point in time, the yet-to-be-rescued.
just as interesting as the viva itself. For example, a viva takes place in many
On that day, as I walked through these London corridors and foyers,
different spaces: examiners confer pre-viva over lunch in a restaurant; the
navigated up and down these London stairs, and moved in and out of these
PhD candidate is greeted in the hallway; the exam occurs in a commandeered
London doors and lifts, I encountered an unexpected part of my architectural
seminar room; papers are signed in an office; and, if the candidate has
self – an almost forgotten and certainly recently unused self. In the wake of
worked hard enough, celebrations are held in a common room.
that distant Christchurch disaster, I looked upon all these London spaces with
Having lived and worked in the UK for some nine years, my New
different eyes. It was not simply that I wondered what it would be like to be
Zealandness is nowadays rarely an up-front part of my everyday life. On this
in an earthquake and to experience the architecture around you shake, fold
day, for example, I was present not as a New Zealander but as an academic
and break. I was suddenly seeing all these London spaces through one very
practised in post-colonial aspects of architectural theory. Yet it happened
specific architectural lens I had acquired in my undergraduate education at
that this viva occurred two days after the Christchurch earthquake. As I
the School of Architecture at Auckland University. The earthquake-proofing
was shuttling between restaurant, viva room, hallway and common room, a
of buildings through principles of bracing, stiffening, bundling and base
number of people quietly asked about the events in Christchurch. This was
isolation were, I imagine, prominent in the training for all architecture students 2.2011 architecturenz 47
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I am very fond of New Zealand and have wonderful family and friends there; but I am now married to a Jamaican and we have family and friends in Bermuda and Jamaica. As things stand, it’s easier and more affordable to live and work in Bermuda and take trips to New Zealand. At age 65 I still like working hard and remain willing to follow good opportunities if they arise.
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Ted Wood, Bermuda
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Definitely – my kids need to understand and appreciate my cultural background as much as I want to re-engage with it. John Loader, Muscat
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When I married an American, we were both engaged in building a life in the States. Over the years we’ve increasingly enjoyed the time we spend in New Zealand. We hope that building a house will enrich this experience. My plan is to increase the time we spend in NZ, which will enhance the rich and varied life we enjoy in New York. David Berridge, New York
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I would love to though the job market seems rather slim. I have always thought I would raise my family there though of course this depends on who this family may be with! Katherine Barnes, Sydney
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I have no fixed plans. I like to imagine that one day I'll return home to a bach by the coast or the bush ... A garden variety fantasy with a lot of Kiwi expats, and probably just as remotely realisable for me as for most of those still living in NZ. NZ is still home, but ... Maitiú Ward, Melbourne
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in New Zealand. At this moment in London, the “structographic” notations that
the archives are. Because this is an ambitious and talented student, she
Waldo Granwal had used to communicate these principles in his lectures on
knows that a PhD from a London university will be valued differently from one
structures at Auckland came flooding back. In my mind’s eye, his eccentric
she might acquire at home. But of course, because of British imperialism,
symbols – hatched areas, perforated lines, tension and compression marks –
those towns in India were linked to London architectures such as the Colonial
annotated and animated the spaces I was navigating.
and India Office in Whitehall.
It is a fact of life that certain pieces of knowledge can be rendered
Likewise, my own family’s history is embedded in the long-distance politics
redundant by being displaced in space and time. Think of the migrant
of empire. My ancestors were part of one of the great colonial migrations. My
professional who can no longer use his or her credentials in their new home.
grandfather was born in the village of Ballynagarrick in Northern Ireland and
While structural principles in architecture have general (global) validity and
migrated to Ashburton, just south of Christchurch, in 1911. There he ran a
travel well, more specialist knowledge, such as that relating to earthquake
small carpet-laying business, servicing the hamlets and farmsteads on the
resistance, is exotic, alien and otherworldly in a place like London, which is,
Canterbury Plains. My (maternal) great-grandfather, a migrant from another
geologically speaking, aged and stable. So the structographical notations that
part of Ireland, was a miner and bridge builder and, in 1871, helped build
danced around before my mind’s eye were, in any proper analytical sense,
the first wooden combined rail and road bridge (then and still the longest
redundant here. And on that day they were merely fleeting symptoms of my
in the country) over the braided Rakaia River just south of Christchurch. At
own preoccupation with the news of the devastation in Christchurch.
around the same time as he was working on the bridge in rural Canterbury,
Yet it is also true that other forms of knowledge can be enhanced and
the Colonial and India Office was being completed in London and the early
given new value through processes of mobility and migration. Take the PhD
company towns established by the East India Company in Bengal were being
that I had been examining that day. It happened to be a study of provincial
formalised and extended by the British colonial government.
towns in colonial Bengal and of how their architecture channelled, facilitated
There are so many of us who, like myself and that PhD student, share
and extended colonial authority deep into India’s continental interior. The
distinct but nonetheless parallel histories of British imperial expansion and
candidate had grown up in some of these towns and her PhD offered her
the migrations and displacements that came in its wake. Our shared colonial
an opportunity to study an aspect of both her national history and her own
heritage, and ongoing (if fading) Commonwealth sensibility, created a point
biography. She elected to do this study in London. Because of India’s British
of mutually recognised past. But we also knew we were in a re-forming
imperial history, to know about these towns one must come to London where
transnational present, where each of us had elected to conduct our
48 architecturenz 2.2011
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“My Mum still asks me that on the phone all the time.
While you make home wherever you are, the call back never leaves. Kirk Wooller, Chicago
“I like the idea of returning, but we have become a bit spoilt living in Singapore with its climate, location and easy living conditions. Having said that, Singapore will never be ‘home.’ ” Yvette Adams, Singapore
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Deane Simpson, Copenhagen
No, we tried a year back in New Zealand in 2010 ... We had underestimated how much momentum we had built up in Sydney, and what that meant in terms of project size, budget, and quality. We have returned to Sydney .... It doesn't preclude doing work in New Zealand, and those projects give us a great opportunity to visit family and friends regularly. Chris Adams, Sydney
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Yes. I think.
Chris Cottrell, Edinburgh
Yes, it’s a lifestyle choice we hope to indulge one day down the track. Jonathan Bisman, Dubai
“Always a complicated question: my wife is Australian, our daughter has spent most of her life in Edinburgh and we are about to make a new home in Singapore. Our loyalties are profoundly split. Academic careers, like many other middle-class careers, are increasingly global. It is this fact, more than any other, that is likely to determine where we will be, and when. Stephen Cairns, Edinburgh
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professional lives away from our national homes, to enter into new patterns of
‘brain drain’ and [was] drawing on the global ‘brain bank’ of people of Indian
mobility that were being produced by post-colonial migrations and the global
origin.” Such stark evidence is not so easily assembled for New Zealand. But
knowledge economy. A shared colonial history made for a particular place for
anecdotally each of us in a New Zealand family with someone abroad knows
both of us as diasporic nationals in a global present.
that there are losses and gains. That such departures, be they permanent or
India and New Zealand have special places in the complex national
not, are the most recent phase of a national history born of the mobility of
diasporas of the global economy. They are both exporters of people. For
people, knowledge and capital. Today’s out migrations are part of this long
India, over ten million people emigrated in 2005 alone, ranking that country
and complex history of coming and going, eddies, loops and back currents.
third behind Mexico and Russia, and ahead of China in the emigration stakes.
The original wooden bridge spanning the Rakaia River that my great-
Although it must be noted that as a proportion of the total population of India
grandfather had a hand in was replaced in 1939 by two concrete structures,
(now estimated to be around 1.2 billion people), the number leaving India is
one to carry rail and the other road. According to Radio New Zealand, both
relatively small. That said, as in many other countries with large numbers of
remained open following the Christchurch earthquake and played their parts
leavers, certain parts of society are most severely impacted. In India, as in
in ferrying people out of the city to safer ground. The fixed infrastructures of
many other places, it is the skilled classes who leave, giving rise to the term
bridges, rails and roads nowadays operate alongside other infrastructures of
“brain drain.” In raw numbers India’s experience of emigration is entirely
connectivity, most notably arcing airline routes and internet data flows. These
larger than that of New Zealand. But as a proportion of the total population,
infrastructures of flow facilitate New Zealand trajectories that are global in
New Zealand’s loss may well be greater. The OECD estimated that in 2005,
reach. They will continue to recast the shape and idea of home, nation, career
24 percent of New Zealand’s most skilled graduates emigrated. This startling
and destiny at individual and collective levels. As for all nations that face the
figure, in a way, affirms an aspect of the New Zealand national imaginary: that
problem of brain drain, the issue is not one of stemming the flow, but how to
as a skilled New Zealander you are very likely to take your skills elsewhere.
remain integrated in and draw energy from those flows. It is a matter of how
Are such out migrations always only a loss, or are there also gains? Let’s take the case of India. In 2007 remittance payments from expatriate
a nation builds, activates and sustains the infrastructures of connectivity to ensure it draws together its talents in and through the state of being worldly.
workers totalled US$27 billion, the largest such figure in the world according to the World Bank. So significant was this income that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that India had “overcome the problem of 2.2011 architecturenz 49