East Polynesia: Architectural and Cultural Guide

This Architectural and Cultural Guide East Polynesia challenges the romanticized visions of the South Pacific by critically examining the built environment through the lens of architecture, history, and cultural resilience. Across over 400 richly illustrated pages, it traces how traditional knowledge systems, ecological adaptation, and colonial ruptures have shaped architectural practices from the Cook Islands via French Polynesia and Pitcairn to Rapa Nui in Chilean Polynesia.

With contributions from local experts, architects, geologists, and historians, the guide foregrounds the complex entanglements of place, power, and memory. Rather than offering a conventional typological catalogue, it maps networks of meaning: from sacred stone platforms (marae) and climate-responsive vernacular dwellings to the infrastructural legacies of nuclear testing and space-age geopolitics. The Pacific is not portrayed as a void but as a stage of cultural innovation and architectural intelligence.

This publication is a carefully curated, research-based exploration of a region where architecture emerges not as monumentality, but as method: flexible, bioclimatic, and socially coded. Aimed at critically minded travellers, scholars, and architects, this volume invites readers to reconsider what architecture can mean in contexts defined not by permanence, but by rhythm, movement, and relational space.

Natascha Meuser (born 1967) is an architect and publisher. She studied architecture in Rosenheim and Chicago and completed her PhD at the Technical University of Berlin. From 2016 to 2023, she was a full professor at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau, where she founded the Institute for Zoo Architecture in 2020. Her research focuses on architectural typologies that explore the relationship between humans and animals, as well as between humans and nature. A particular emphasis of her work lies in the field of educational buildings, with a strong interest in how spatial environments shape learning and perception. She is the author and editor of numerous publications, including "Aquarium Buildings. Construction and Design Manual" (with Jürgen Lange), and continues to explore the communicative potential of architecture in both academic and practical contexts.

Philipp Meuser (born 1969) is an architect and publisher. He studied architecture in Berlin and Zurich with a focus on architectural history and theory, and completed his PhD at the Technical University of Berlin with a dissertation on the typology of Soviet mass housing. His work operates at the intersection of practice and theory, combining design with cultural and historical analysis. Motivated by questions of resilience and climate change, Meuser has increasingly focused on non-European building cultures. His research spans a wide range of geographies – from the vernacular architecture of sub-Saharan Africa and the authoritarian urbanism of Eurasia to the spatial traditions of Polynesia. He has held an honorary professorship at O. M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, Ukraine, since 2018, and served as visiting professor for public humanities and cultural heritage at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2022.