Tanya Ruka and Dr Victoria Chanse, breaking barriers across design and landscape architecture
Tanya Ruka and Dr Victoria Chanse are visionary women in Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa—Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation who are leading the future of design and academia.
Tanya Ruka
Tanya Ruka of Ngati Pakau and Ngapuhi descent is a Lecturer in Design Matauranga Maori at Te Kura Hoahoa—School of Design Innovation and a Contemporary Artist and Executive Director for Native Land Digital mapping global Indigenous Territories.
Tanya’s impact stems from Mātauranga Māori and Indigenous Knowledge systems that are the foundation of her research and contemporary art practice.
“Learning how to implement manākitanga, whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga concepts within research practice and strengthening the kaupapa (methodology) of projects is invaluable to our findings and personally and culturally enriching.”
Tanya works collaboratively with groups across the disciplines of Indigenous knowledge systems, design, engineering, and science and regularly presents at international conferences.
She is currently working with dedicated indigenous and non-indigenous textile researchers, academics, scientists, engineers, growers and local Iwi (tribes) to develop circular designed, native plant fibre materials and textiles that help connect people back to the land through indigenous ways of knowing.
In 2024, she will present at the Indigenous Design Academic Conference at the Emily Carr School of Art & Design in Vancouver and at the 19th International Conference on Arts in Society at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.
“Acknowledging mātauranga has been beneficial to everyone involved.”
Dr Victoria Chanse
Dr Victoria Chanse is a community designer, planner, and Programme Director of Landscape Architecture at Te Kura Waihanga—Wellington School of Architecture.
Her research, teaching, and professional practice focus on solving problems associated with the local impacts of climate change such as the sea level rise, flooding, and stormwater, often through participatory, community-based approaches to develop local responsive designs.
“I am interested in the potential contributions of landscape architecture in addressing communities’ needs and changing landscapes under different scenarios of sea level rise and stormwater management.”
As the Programme Director of Landscape Architecture, Dr Chanse is a leader to staff and students and uses her position to give back to the people and land.
“A significant component of delivering resilient design includes community engagement, consideration of cultural needs and concerns, highly interdisciplinary collaborations and community-university partnerships.
“These partnerships feature students presenting a range of design solutions through the landscape architecture studios. Communities have been able to select the conceptual design projects to either raise the profile of their needs or successfully acquire funding for these projects.”
Often, Dr Chanse and her students partner operate as community designers and planners on multidisciplinary teams alongside public health, ecologists, environmental engineers and other professionals in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.
“From a teaching standpoint, one of my public health collaborators used to refer to bringing me in as the solutions person—he would discuss some of the challenges, and I and the students would talk about the solutions through landscape design and planning.”
Dr Chanse worked on the Sand Rivers Headwaters pilot project in South Carolina in the United States of America with students from her class and Dr Gene Eidson from the Clemson University Restoration Institute. This project was a pilot project for the Sustainable Sites Intiative. This was a highly collaborative project with a mix of environmental engineers, ecologists and others.
At the University of Maryland, under the guidance of Dr Chanse in one of her studio courses, her students placed in the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s national stormwater competition four years in a row.