Glazing over the Past; Thoughts on Interior Archaeology

摘要

This article examines the subject of interior archaeology as an instance where history and interior architecture matter. Interior archaeology is defined as that situation when the archaeological excavation of a building site reveals significant historic objects that determine an alteration in building design in order for these archaeological features and artifacts to be in situ and inside. The ground and historic time (phenomena that are both exterior to the building) are mediated by the new building's envelope in order to conceptually bring them inside of architecture and the temporal present. Three central city archaeological sites in New Zealand are examined in relation to the particular role that glass, as a building material, has played in constructing and mediating this theoretical context. They are: TeAro Pa, Old Bank Arcade, and Wall Street, all of which were redesigned in order to accommodate mid-nineteenth-century material that evidences New Zealand's colonial history: Te Aro Pa whare, Plimmer's Ark, and the Corduroy Track respectively.