2026 Tātuhi | Drawing Archive Selection

The panel for the A+W NZ Tātuhi / Drawing Architecture: Sarah Treadwell Archive has selected a work Teu le vā: Faatulaga Paāolo by Sarah McLeod-Venu for the 2026 addition to the online archive. Congratulations Sarah!

Selection Team comments;

Ideas of emergence dominate the drawing Teu le vā #3, which has developed through a sequence of drawings, and the drawing reveals an emergence of shadowy geometries through subtle textures on the textured paper. The Samoan term Teu le vā can be translated as tending to relationships, acknowledging the importance of an ongoing care - which can be tensioned or slackened through time - and here marks seem to emerge from relational knowledge and Samoan understandings of space/time. Architecture is suggested as a conduit for embodied memory and ancestry, a common theme throughout current drawing practices and across many cultural positionings.

Selection Team 2026;

• Sarah Treadwell

• Ashleigh Smith

• Marian Macken

• Karamia Muller

• Simon Twose

• Sharon Jansen

• Rafik Patel

• Sue Gallagher

(Lynda Simmons abstained from voting due to a conflict of interest) 
 

Drawing Title: ‘Teu le vā: Faatulaga Paāolo
Author: Sarah McLeod-Venu
Size: 970 x 5000mm
Materials: Charcoal and Pastel on Japanese Kitakata Washi Paper
Thesis Title: Fa’a’ato’atoa: From Fractals to Fullness
Thesis supervisor: Simon Twose and Ray Foalima
University: Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka  

2025 (for 2026 selection)

About the Archive;
The A+W NZ Tātuhi / Drawing Architecture: Sarah Treadwell Archive is a slow-building digital storehouse that gathers together architectural drawings that reveal their ‘drawing thinking’ in the pursuit of architecture, rather than being architectural representation or documentation. The drawings selected for the archive are stand-alone from their architectural project developed in the course of the thesis year.
The intention of the archive is to provide some kind of overview to the development and importance of architectural drawing and its relationship to design and building. Technological advancements, theory cycles and media lecturers all contribute to the changing waves of drawing interrogation within the design process, and the archive hopes to capture and record for
future historians these shifts.
The archive was established in 2017 to mark the year of retirement of Dr Sarah Treadwell, whose academic career at Waipapa Taumata Rau the University of Auckland has had such an impact
on the education of so many, establishing the School of Architecture and Planning as the ‘Drawing School’ globally. It also celebrates her academic work and career as an artist, and the first drawing for the archive was one of hers.
The A+W NZ Drawing Archive offers a koha each year to the author of the drawing selected, in acknowledgement of the permission for ongoing use of their digital image on the A+W NZ website.

https://architecturewomen.org.nz/research/drawings