Icao Tiseli Photo: supplied
What would a map that represents a more distinct lived human cultural perspective look like? That has been the very personal question for Icao Tiseli with her award-winning project Mapping the Wheke.
At the end of 2023, the Tongan-born Tāmaki Makaurau-based associate at architecture firm Jasmax was named one of six winners for the project at Archiprix International, a biennial competition that looks to showcase the new generation of the world's best architects and urbanists. She travelled to Rotterdam with other finalists to workshop ideas for assisting the rebuild of Ukraine.
Drawing by Icao Tiseli Photo: supplied
Mapping the Wheke has previously won Tiseli an NZIA Resene Student Design Award. It was submitted by Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland, Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning as part of her graduation thesis.
Born on the island of Vava’u, Tongatapu and immigrating to Aotearoa New Zealand aged nine, Tiseli’s work was inspired by the magic of returning to where she was from.
Mapping the Wheke is a re-imagining of the mapping of her ancestral land of her Tongan heritage. One that doesn’t traditionally recognise a compass, north and south or an aerial point of view, yet is sophisticated in its ability by celestial navigation to map an ocean.
Tiseli explored the concept of the ocean as a bridge rather than a barrier between land and people.
She joined Mark Amery on RNZ National’s Culture 101.
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