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interiorawards.co.nz

Ana Heremaia Dorian Minty Gosha Haley Andrew Mitchell Amanda Harkness
Director, Principal, Principal, Director, Interior Editor,
% t—dio PaciŮc rchitect—re Grimshaw Patterson ssociates rchitect—re 
Contents

22

Contents
10 EDITORIAL
10 Chris Barton considers OpenAI’s latest offering, Sora,
and its ability to render real worlds into existence

15 COLUMNS
15 Pip Cheshire dreams of verdant cities, filled with trees
that soak up carbon and breathe out oxygen
19 Karamia Müller looks at the relational nature of Te Tiriti
and the importance of collectivism over individualism

22 ACROSS THE BOARD

22 Te Tōangaroa (Quay Park) downtown stadium and urban
precinct proposal; a new Irving Smith Architects project
in Whakatū Nelson; NZGBC Housing Summit
24 Open Christchurch taking place in early May;
a new category for the Interior Awards – Education
26 Mike Austin and Amanda Harkness discuss the merits
of Grand Designs: both the series and its presenter
30 2023 Te Kāhui Whaihanga Resene Student Design
Awards winner Isabella Muirhead

32 PRACTICE
32 Te taura whakairo: the continuing tradition – 2023
Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZIA Gold Medallist Deidre Brown
reflects on her journey through architecture
32
6 Architecture New Zealand
Contents

44

43 WORK
44 Towards an old architecture
– THE PĀ, UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO

56 Culture and collegiality

– TE RANGIHĪROA, UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

66 Home on the lease

– STUDIO HOUSE

76 Masters of manipulation
– PRECINCT PROPERTIES’ HEAD OFFICE

85 CRIT
85 Itinerary: Heritage conservation
stories of our era
90 Book: Architectural Conservation
in Australia, New Zealand and
the Pacific Islands: National
Experiences and Practice
93 Book: Sheppard & Rout Architects

96
Vol 1 1982–2021

CARTOON
93
8 Architecture New Zealand
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In the mind’s eye
Chris Barton
Image: David St George.
THE ARCHITECT AS MAGICIAN: LIKE
many, I was captivated by Junya Ishigami’s
presentation at this year’s in:situ conference
– a virtuoso display with gravity-defying
tricks, such as his impossibly thin (12mm)
steel roof sagging across a 90m span to
create a semi-covered plaza at the Kanagawa
Institute of Technology (KAIT) in Japan.
Ishigami was a keynote speaker at the
conference run by Te Kāhui Whaihanga
New Zealand Institute of Architects in
February. I was particularly fascinated
by the security camera footage Ishigami
showed of people weaving their way
through the diverse arrangement of some
305 slim, steel columns dotted throughout
the 2000sqm glass-walled Workshop
building, also at KAIT. So, too, was one
of the next presenters, Jean Pierre Crousse
of Barclay & Crousse in Peru, who said,
“Look, we do it like this” as he took a
crazily weaving path around the furniture
to the stage.
The video captured vividly the
architectural ambiguity Ishigami likes to
play with. Rather than a seemingly random
arrangement, the columns’ placement was
carefully thought out. Groups of columns
are arranged to divide different spaces
and there is a startling array of circulation
10 Architecture New Zealand
paths for both individuals and groups to
pass through, as though wending their way
through a forest of tree trunks.
I thought again of Ishigami’s mesmerising
video sequences about a week later when
OpenAI announced Sora, an AI text-to-
video generator that’s apparently next
level. Sora can generate a 60-second-long ON THE COVER
The Pā at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato
photorealistic high-definition video from University of Waikato, a collaboration
written descriptions, reportedly creating between Architectus, Jasmax and
designTRIBE. Image: Simon Devitt.
synthetic video (minus audio at present) at
a fidelity and consistency greater than any PUBLISHER
text-to-video model currently available. Nathan Inkpen
EDITOR
I’ve been largely sceptical about the Chris Barton
impact of AI on architecture. Sora might be DEPUTY EDITOR/INTERIOR EDITOR
Amanda Harkness
changing my mind. It created a video from ART & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR
the prompt: “Reflections in the window of a André Kini
train travelling through the Tokyo suburbs”. ADVERTISING SALES
The result was not only highly believable but Mark Lipman – mark.lipman@agm.co.nz
strangely compelling. Similarly, the prompt
ADMINISTRATION
asking for “a beautiful homemade video office@agm.co.nz
showing the people of Lagos, Nigeria, in the CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER ANZ
Ashleigh Porter
year 2056” resulted in a complex visualisation SUBSCRIPTIONS
of scenes, beginning with a group at a table agm.co.nz/store
at an outdoor restaurant then panning to an ANNUAL RATES
New Zealand $68
open-air market and cityscape. Australia / South Pacific $140
Rest of world $180
What gets me interested is that Sora DISTRIBUTION
seems to be not just manipulating pixels Are Direct NZ
but conceptualising three-dimensional PRINTER
SCG
scenes that unfold in time. In other words, ISSN 0113-4566
it’s doing something like what architects do Copyright: 2024 BCI New Zealand Pty Ltd
when they design – picturing spaces, people The Warren Trust supports
and movement in scenes and places in their Architecture NZ by way
mind’s eye, imagining not just how they of an editorial grant.
look but what they are. No doubt Ishigami
visualised people weaving among his columns
as he was designing his KAIT Workshop.
As Joshua Rothman describes it in
Architecture New Zealand (Architecture NZ), is
The New Yorker, Sora doesn’t make owned and published by BCI New Zealand Pty Ltd.
BCI New Zealand and its parent company
recordings, it renders ideas: “Sora isn’t BCI Media Pty Ltd also own and publish Archify,
ArchitectureNow and the Interior Awards.
Photoshop – it contains knowledge about
The views expressed in this magazine, including
what it shows us”. Where does this all lead? statements and opinions, do not necessarily
represent the views of BCI New Zealand Pty Ltd
Rothman argues Sora’s overall comprehension and its staff unless expressly stated. BCI New
Zealand and its employees disclaim any liability
of the objects and spaces it conjures means for statements made in Architecture NZ, unless
that it isn’t just a system for generating expressly stated.
video. It’s a step, as OpenAI puts it, “towards
BCI NEW ZEALAND PTY LTD
building general purpose simulators of the Central Park Corporate Centre,
Ground Floor, Building 5/660 Great South Road,
physical world”. Which is a little bit terrifying. Ellerslie, Auckland, New Zealand
Phone +64 9 846 4068 / Fax +64 9 846 8742
If AI can simulate everything in the physical
POSTAL ADDRESS
world, then it can probably control it. Private Bag 99915, Newmarket, Auckland 1149
105 Carlton Gore Road, Newmarket, Auckland
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 CK SERIES According to New Scientist, to achieve this
Commercial Kitchen Drain
higher level of realism, Sora combines two
different AI approaches: “The first is a diffusion
model similar to those used in AI image
MC SERIES generators such as DALL-E. These models learn
Modular Channel System to gradually convert randomised image pixels
into a coherent image. The second AI technique
is called ‘transformer architecture’ and is used to
contextualise and piece together sequential data.”
SL SERIES This is like the ‘large language models’ used in AI
Slot Channel Drain
programmes like ChatGPT that use transformer
architecture to assemble words into generally
comprehensible sentences. In Sora, OpenAI
VCC SERIES broke down video clips into visual “spacetime
Vinyl Floor Channel patches” that Sora’s transformer architecture
could process.
At the time of writing, Sora is still in the
research preview stage and generating quite a
bit of speculation. Benj Edwards in Ars Technica
notes OpenAI has not revealed its dataset but
says it’s likely Sora is using “synthetic video data
generated in a video game engine in addition to
sources of real video (say, scraped from YouTube
or licensed from stock video libraries)”.
The article quotes computer scientist Jim Fan,
a specialist in training AI with synthetic data:
“If you think OpenAI Sora is a creative toy like
DALL-E..., think again. Sora is a data-driven
physics engine. It is a simulation of many worlds,
real or fantastical. The simulator learns intricate
rendering, ‘intuitive’ physics, long-horizon
reasoning, and semantic grounding, all by some
denoising and gradient maths.”
Is there a downside? Edwards: “Very soon,
every photorealistic video you see online could
be 100 percent false in every way. Moreover,

FOOD every historical video you see could also be

false.” Truth and fiction in media becoming

PRODUCTION indistinguishable all of the time. It sounds like

DRAINAGE SYSTEMS
Allproof’s premium range of
stainless steel drainage solutions
for commercial kitchens and food
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a nightmare. But as a tool to assist an architect’s
imagination to conceptualise 3D scenes
unfolding in time and to render real worlds,
even if they seem fantastical, into existence,
Sora-like AI seems like a magic trick that will
be hard to resist.
EMAIL chris.barton@agm.co.nz

INSTAGRAM @architecture.nz

allproof.com WEBSITE architecturenow.co.nz

12 Architecture New Zealand

Auckland
39 Nugent Street
Auckland, 1023
+64 9 379 9680
auckland@ecc.co.nz

Wellington
61 Thorndon Quay
Wellington, 6011
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Trees
Pip Cheshire
WHAT IS IT ABOUT TREES?
They seem to be about as divisive as
the current coalition government’s
views on Te Tiriti. As with most
things these days, we are all on
a spectrum, and our attitude to
these gentle, mute behemoths is
no exception. At one end lie those
who hug and imbue them with
supernatural forces, at the other,
the dark forces of those who sneak
out in the dead of night to mutilate
wayward limbs to restore previously
obscured views.
We had three Norfolk Pines up
north, planted along with a ragtag
collection of plants left over from
a neighbour’s landscape contract
in my first year at architecture
school. The goal was to stabilise
a slip-prone hillside. I would like
to say that I planted them but, the
fact is, the week of their planned
bedding coincided with a period of
outstanding surf in the bay below
the slope and I’m embarrassed
to say that my friends and fellow
students, Mal Bartleet and Chris
Fox, did the hard graft while I rode
the wild surf.
By happy coincidence, I later
bought part of that hillside with a
couple of friends and we built what
I now call the ‘northern office’; a
little plywood box perched over the
bay that is increasingly obscured
as the fruits of Mal and Chris’
labours grow. Not unexpectedly, the
Norfolks grew well in that northern
climate and towered over our little
house. Well, they did but, now,
only one remains. We watched as
the other two’s deep-green foliage
faded and turned brown, their tall
decaying trunks a liability in the
increasingly common tempests that
accompany the tail end of tropical
cyclones swinging down from the
tropical waters to the north.
We thought it was, perhaps, a
disease that struck only two of the
three trees, but closer inspection
revealed small drill holes at the base
of each trunk and our fears that
someone who shared our slippery
hillside had killed the trees in order
to gain a better view of the beach
below were realised. Recently,
that one surviving tree has had
branches cut to extend the view
of the beach further; from this, it’s
not too difficult to figure out from
which house the phantom pruner
has come. In the interests of a quiet
life, we have said nothing; though,
as I huff and puff my way back up
the hill, my thoughts are consumed
with revenge.
This is not an unusual story.
The popular press seems to
feature stories of this ilk at regular
intervals: neighbours cutting
branches leaning over fences and
similar attacks on much-loved trees
on public land. While I generally
applaud direct action, killing others’
trees seems a crude assertion of
assumed rights on the part of the
assailant, all the more so given the
decades of steadfast growth that
Late night at
Cape Evans, are lost in the roar of a chainsaw
Ross Island, or the surreptitious actions of the
Pip Cheshire.
Photo
clandestine poisoner.
Lizzie Meek. The loss of the odd private tree
Opinion
is, though, nothing compared
with the more complex politics
surrounding the replacement of
well-established ‘colonial weeds’,
such as those crowning Auckland’s
volcanic cones, with native species
that will take many decades to
make a similar contribution to the
environment as those they have
replaced. The felling of several
hundred mature trees in one hit
is a dramatic commitment to
the long-term decolonisation of
the city’s cones and, while one
might acknowledge the long-term
importance of the action, it is still a
significant loss of urban tree cover.
I have spent a bit of time thinking
about these big, green and wobbly
shaped things lately. This is not
with any degree of scientific
inquiry but I have gazed, lantern
jawed, through the foliage trying,
as part of my somewhat desultory
summer holiday self-improvement
programme, to figure out how to
better represent them with pen
and brush. I am embarrassed to
say that I have only a fledgling
knowledge of biology and am a bit
late in coming to the realisation that
these vast assemblages of structure
and chemical process swaying
about in the wind are the most
extraordinarily wonderful, complex
things, and that we should have
more of them.
The case for increasing the tree
cover in our cities is irrefutable,
be it carbon sequestration, oxygen
exhalation, urban cooling or the
psychological health and well-being
of citizens. Alas, our cities fare poorly
in comparison with other cities in
percentages of tree cover. We need
look no further than Singapore to see
the impact of an aggressive campaign
to establish tree cover wherever it is
possible: on private property, in the
Architecture New Zealand 15
Opinion

public realm, within buildings, and

clinging onto the roofs and façades of
city buildings.
One might say that such a dense
metropolis sitting on the equator has a
greater need of lower air temperatures
offered by urban planting. Lest we
feel complacent, comfortable in our
subtropical latitudes, we should
remember that the tropics are
inexorably coming our way. We
might also point to Singapore as
an example of the efficiency of a
small, densely populated city state
with a dominant political regime,
implementing comprehensive change
where the science and goals of such
change are clear.
LiDAR analysis of existing
coverage points to significant
asymmetry of cover between
suburbs, those with higher coverage
generally correlated with economic
well-being. That same analysis
also highlights the loss of larger
trees: those that make greater
contributions to the environment,
thanks to their greater leaf area,
than do smaller, more recently
established trees.
The removal of the RMA’s
blanket protection of trees has led
to the felling of many larger trees
to facilitate land development.
We architects engaged in the
development of land and the
intensification of the urban
environment have a key role to play ABOVE benefit the wider community incremental gains. The public
I like that these
in the protection of existing trees. guys seem while costs lie only with the sector offers the possibility of
The configuration of land use and unphased by landowner. For those keen to much more significant gains, but
sliding down
early site planning gives us a special a slip-prone
pick up the cudgels of political one suspects a few heads might
opportunity to affect tree coverage slope, having a lobbying, Associate Professor need to be banged together in
by ensuring that existing trees do not limb buried in Justin Morgenroth of the our city hall, at least, if significant
the sand, then
need to be felled to facilitate land having it take University of Canterbury’s School change is to be effected. You
development and ensuring adequate off again and of Forestry outlines some of the will have your own view about
provide vital
space is provided for reasonably shelter on a strategies for sharing the costs the desirability of recreating
sized trees in projects. hot, calm day between council and landowners a Singapore of the south but,
in the north.
It may be a pious hope that our Pip Cheshire, in an interesting RNZ Detail under our current planning and
clients will share our commitment to 2024. programme.1 legislative controls, we may need
the growth of the urban forest and The protection of existing trees the single-minded focus of my
we should augment our proselytising REFERENCE and the provision of space for new northern neighbour if we are to
1
within projects with lobbying our rnz.co.nz/ ones on private property will make have verdant cities offering shade
audio/
city halls for mechanisms that player?audio_
good contributions to increasing and delight, soaking up carbon
acknowledge trees on private land id=2018881262 tree coverage but they will be slow, and breathing out oxygen.

16 Architecture New Zealand

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Habits of mind
Karamia Müller
KIA ORA READER.
The working year of 2024 is under
way and I know this because, in
very Tāmaki Makaurau fashion,
the traffic is straight from the
devil’s email. Another year, another
infuriating stretch of cars where
one can only dream of having
reliable public transport.
I have found returning to work
this year, well, a bit tougher than
usual. The weather doesn’t help
but, if I were to guess, there has
been a bit of a sense of dread about
the global outlook: the US veto
of a truce resolution for the Gaza
vote in the UN, and the economic
outlook. There are no guarantees
on inflation coming down in 2024
and we are watching as many
things to which our taxes have
contributed over the past few years
are, I guess (how do I say this?)
one after another, cancelled, and
replaced with other priorities and
projects.
It can all feel too Sisyphyean,
continually striving without the
satisfaction of the results you
were hoping for. Democracy: she’s
tough. I write this on the day before
Waitangi Day and, this year, there
is a tension brought on by the
(leaked) draft Treaty Principles Bill:
a bill reportedly authored (today’s
headline used the term ‘architect’) by
the current Minister for Regulation
and ACT Party Leader, David
Seymour. Its non-authorised release,
together with plans to disestablish
the Māori Health Authority and the
removal of te reo Māori from the
public sector, has encouraged a call
to action from Māori and for Te
Tiriti o Waitangi partners to protest.
In a landmark occasion, Kiingi
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII called
for a national hui at Tūrangawaewae
marae in Ngāruawāhia, with a
ABOVE mandate, collectively, to strengthen
Karamia, in
the resolve to hold the new
her garden.
Photo Leilani coalition government to account.
Heather. It was attended by thousands.
REFERENCES
1 Anne Salmond,
‘Anne Salmond
on the Treaty
debate: Māori
and Pākehā
think differently’.
newsroom.
co.nz/2023/
12/15/anne-
salmond-on-
the-treaty-
debate-maori-
and-pakeha-
think-differently/ ABOVE Volcanic section Aotearoa – one in a series of images by Grayson Croucher from his
2 Ibid. Highly Commended NZIA 2023 Resene Student Design Awards entry: ‘Moving Mountains –
3 Ibid. Didactic Architecture for Aotearoa’.
Opinion
Since then, the debate has increased
in tension. As I write, and follow the
1News live feed, the welcome for
David Seymour at Waitangi is not
exactly welcoming. Backgrounded
by protest heckling that is, at times,
more foregrounded, Seymour
is currently saying, and I am
paraphrasing here, that the bill
is not stripping the Treaty of its
commitment to partnership with
tangata whenua; rather, it is the
strengthening of tino rangatiratanga
for all. Protest waiata from some
attending means he ends his speech
yelling into the microphone that the
bill is about the best future for the
country and it seems to be implied
that the idea should be regarded as
a good faith proposal and those who
do not regard it as such, well, they
are themselves acting in bad faith.
Even at a distance, I am struck by
the ongoing claim that reforming
the principles of the Treaty is
to honour the intention of the
various rangatira who signed it.
Architecture New Zealand 19
Opinion

The differing contexts of 2024

and 1840 aside, I find Professor
Anne Salmond’s commentary on
the bill for Newsroom productive
in situating and organising my
own habits of mind. Discussing
Seymour’s issue, that the current
collectivist rather than individualist
framing of the current principles
does not uphold the rights of
individuals, she writes: “This
reflects a kind of logic that is more
common in European ways of
thinking than it is in te ao Māori.
Neo-liberal theories that focus on
the rights of individuals trace back
as far as the 16th century, when the
French philosopher René Descartes
famously declared, ‘Cogito ergo sum
– I think therefore I am’. ”1
Salmond further unpacks the way
in which this ‘habit of mind’ sets up
an analytical logic for encountering THIS PAGE
A series of project
then organising the world in binary images from
terms. Compare this, Salmond the NZIA’s 2023
Resene Student
offers, to a relational logic where Design Awards:
the world is ordered “into dynamic ‘Moving Mountains
– Didactic
networks, animated by reciprocal
Architecture
exchanges – very like whakapapa for Aotearoa’ by
in fact.”2 Grayson Croucher.
The project
Salmond concludes that, given underscores the
the presence of relational thinking richness enabled
in the built realm
in te reo, Te Tiriti is a relational when architects
document expressed in the language honour the
country’s history.
of chiefly gift exchange.3 the world is already organised to The jury citation
What could this entry-point reward individualism of a certain for the Highly
Commended
mean for tauiwi? What could it kind, continually rewarding the
project reads: “This
mean for built-realm discussions? individuals who succeed in it, while is architecture as
For me, I reflect on how much is punishing, for some to the point of the embodiment
of cultural
a habit of mind and how much is death, those who exist outside of it, knowledge, identity
really a contestable idea – what is present and past. and history.
The narrative is
the litmus test when, on a spectrum Individualism is the dominant beautifully handled.
of habit to idea, we have a sliding habit of mind and, in terms of the The stories of our
geography and
scale that can, and often does, look built realm and, in particular, the the way landscape
wildly different from experience question of housing and shared has been formed
through legend
to experience, from context to spaces, the past few decades have
are uncovered,
context, from moment to moment? demonstrated its limits. It is critical valued and brought
Place these questions within the to the future of the country and together to heal the
difficult passages
built-realm context and the rubber its people that debating ideas is of our history.
hits the road, and the abstract contextualised by historical events, How that has been
achieved with such
becomes material with significant such as colonisation, and by a richer, evocative structures
investment. I am not convinced deeper understanding of where our demonstrates a
commendable
that the architects of the bill have habits of mind stem from and how depth of
completely reconciled how much of embedded they are. understanding.”

20 Architecture New Zealand

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Across the Board
CITY-SHAPING
A global consortium made headlines recently with the release
of the HKS design for a proposed downtown stadium and
urban neighbourhood precinct in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
The consortium’s vision for Te Tōangaroa (Quay Park)
includes a 50,000-seat, U-shaped stadium as well as four
hotels, bars, restaurants, retail, commercial office spaces,
apartments, education and health facilities, and open public
spaces, designed to “enhance the mana of the whenua”.
Working closely with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and New
Zealand Rugby, the consortium, led by Jim Doyle and
Paul Nisbet of Cenfield MXD, has brought together both
international and local players in the sports industry to help
turn their vision into a reality. International sports architecture
firm HKS is leading the design, in collaboration with precinct
22 Architecture New Zealand
architecture and design practice Buchan, local studio TOA
Architects and landscape architects Boffa Miskell.
HKS director Andrew Colling says the stadium design,
inspired by the taiao (natural environment) and the history of
Tāmaki Makaurau, could become “Auckland’s version of the
Sydney Opera House”.
“We want to help create a uniquely Auckland and New Zealand
experience that is a reflection of the community and culture,” says
Colling: “a visionary concept that provides the All Blacks, the New
Zealand Warriors, The Blues and the new Auckland FC franchise
with a world-class home, unlike any other in Australasia.”
The stadium forms the centrepiece of the proposed
15ha urban precinct, which ties together surrounding
neighbourhoods with activated public spaces.
 WALLÉ MARK II SET
TO TAKE SHAPE
Irving Smith Architects continues to further new
generations of timber structural buildings with its latest
project in Whakatū Nelson’s central CBD – a 2000m2
mixed retail and office space development set across three
levels on an enclosed 900m2 site.
Architect Andrew Irving says the project, a big sister
to the practice’s award-winning studio WallÉ, advances
ISA’s research into innovative and carbon-better hybrid
building techniques. “A concrete perimeter allows full
site occupation, anchored by a service core central to a
lightweight timber post/beam/floor system,” he says. “Steel
is used for tension bracing only, to reduce carbon loading.”
Irving says small projects like these are important.
“Introducing more timber and better carbon outcomes to
the typologies we work on most often is something we can
all attempt, and that’s how we start to make a difference.”
The 12–15-month construction phase is scheduled to
start during the first quarter of 2024.
Render: Supplied.

Image: Supplied
“More than a ‘downtown stadium’ that activates the
eastern approach to Auckland’s CBD, the proposed design
will revitalise existing industrial areas into an engaging
neighbourhood precinct and destination that provides HOUSING SUMMIT 2024
genuine activation year-round,” says Phil Schoutrop, The New Zealand Green Building Council
Buchan Principal and Precincts Sector Lead. Housing Summit will take place on
Tracy Davis of TOA Architects says Te Tōangaroa will Wednesday 22 May at the Aotea Centre,
leave a legacy for future generations, “both for Ngāti Auckland. The programme of speakers
Whātua Ōrākei and the people of Aotearoa, creating and case studies is focused on industry
outcomes for Māori and the wider community and developments, including ESG, build-to-rent,
providing a fan experience unlike anything in the world”. and creating thriving communities that
The project design and delivery team includes HKS, embrace the principles of te ao Māori, nature
Buchan, TOA Architects, Boffa Miskell, Aurecon, Robert and biodiversity. NZIA and NZRAB CPD
Bird Group, Barker & Associates and Turner & Townsend. points are available for attendance. nzgbc.org.nz

Architecture New Zealand 23

 Across the Board

DISCOVER ŌTAUTAHI
THROUGH ITS
ARCHITECTURE

Photography: Athfield Architects (02), Peanut Productions (03, 04, 07), Patrick Reynolds (06), Sarah Rowlands (01, 08), Rangi Ruru (05).
Open Christchurch, the ‘annual festival of
architectural excellence’, returns in early
May with a bumper programme prepared 01 02
by Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and
City Making. Fifty of Christchurch’s best
buildings will be open for exploration,
along with a series of designed landscapes
and guided walks. Three special events
and a public programme of talks, tours and
activities round out the programme.
Te Pūtahi Director Jessica Halliday says
03 04
highlights of this year’s festival include
the sheer variety of buildings and a focus
on innovative mixed-use developments
and adaptive re-use, from a one-of-a-kind
youth facility dedicated to maintaining
and improving the mental health and
well-being of young people to the recently
opened Marian College, housed in a former
05 06
Foodstuffs distribution centre.
The full programme will be released on
21 March 2024. Save the date and head to
Christchurch for 3–5 May. openchch.nz

PICTURED AT RIGHT Marian College (01),

Te Hononga Civic Building (02), Forestry
Building (03), Fonua Mana (04), Te Koraha (05),
Oxford Terrace Baptist Church (06), St Michael
07 08
and All Angels (07), view of city (08).

INTERIOR AWARDS
NEW CATEGORY
This year sees the introduction of a new
Education category to the Interior Awards,
in order to recognise schools, universities
(including halls of residence), child and
daycare centres, and other learning facilities.
“Previously, education projects were
included in our Civic category,” explains
Awards convenor Amanda Harkness. “But,
over the years, we’ve seen a real growth in
the number and quality of these projects,
and, with that and input from our 2023 jury
Image: Sam Hartnett.

and entrants, it made sense to create a new

‘Education’ category on its own.” Enter by
Wednesday 1 May at interiorawards.co.nz
LEFT Interior Awards 2021 finalist in the Civic category,
Bull O’Sullivan Architecture’s Te Hohepa Kōhanga Reo.

24 Architecture New Zealand

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 Across the Board
THE GRAND DESIGN DOWN UNDER
Mike Austin considers the long-running TV series
franchise and its missing component – the architect – while
Amanda Harkness goes to see Kevin McCloud on tour.
‘Grand’ reveals a certain distance from
its content, confirming design as an elite
activity and, while it is thought to be
generally about ‘architecture’, the word
doesn’t appear in the title, although used
regularly during the show. It apparently
began 24 years ago in England, fronted
by Kevin McCloud, who is a performer,
not an architect, and the show is now
seen in “60 or 70 countries”, making it
an international franchise. It includes
some regular routines, such as the
presenter praising the building and then
indicating his superiority with a big ‘but’,
followed by a ‘wondering’ about potential
shortcomings, such as feasibility, timing
or budget.
So, what is it about? It’s about the
construction of upper-end houses and it
makes one wonder whether it is watched
enviously, or critically, by viewers. What it
does demonstrate is that, even when there
are lots of resources, there are numerous
hassles involved in building a house. Every
show turns out to be about the problems
that come up during construction,
although the solutions are seldom spelt
out. It does seem as though the difficulties
might be exaggerated at times but it
emphasises the commitment required.
A surprising aspect is that, prior to the
final visit of the presenter, completion
looks remote but, at the visit, there it is,
with finishes, furnishings and landscaping
(or at least what is filmed) and then the
completion party. We all know that this
is somehow false but perhaps what is
true is that, at the end, all is forgotten.
Houses take forever to finish and this is a
complex and detailed issue.
Although the word ‘architecture’ is used
regularly during the show, architectural
concerns do not appear and architects
seldom figure as important, at least since
Chris Moller (a member of a significant
Kiwi architectural clan) left the local show.
Certainly, we architects imagine we’re
26 Architecture New Zealand
important but, while the programme
hooks into the intensity and complexity
of building a bespoke house, it somehow
leaves out the architectural process.
Discussions and disagreements between
owners and architects are not shown, nor
the production of the usual proposals,
propositions and problems. Sketches,
briefs and diagrams don’t appear and the
clarity and complexity of cross-sections
(the basis of design decisions for many
architects) are not used. Architectural
drawings are not shown; rather, a crude,
digital 3D line drawing is presented, giving
locations of functional spaces. So, all the
work that an architect does conceptually,
programmatically and graphically does not
appear. The joy of architecture – the visual
and spatial – seldom has a look in. Instead,
the house is a means of displaying the
whims and taste of the owner. Finally, the
results are often unusually dull compared
to the interesting local houses that do
(or don’t) win local accolades, by hard-
working architects all over the motu.
Recently, the short list was presented
for the RIBA ‘House of the Year’ under
the Grand Designs banner. Revealed
was a tendency to cover all options in
the commentary, such as “the balance
is exactly right”, or “protecting the past
while guaranteeing the future”, “simple
but generous”, “intimate but grand”, none
telling us much, with an overindulgence
in “beautiful” and “wonderful”. The
winner, which was fairly ordinary, was
chosen by the RIBA judges who said
it was characterised by “playfulness”.
Those used to Athfield and Walker might
wonder in what way. Mike Austin
I wasn’t sure what to expect of McCloud’s
one-man show, Home Truths. He’s been
dubbed the ‘David Attenborough of
architecture’ and there’s no denying his
success in bringing the subject to a wider
audience through his enduring television
Image: YouTube Channel 4 Lifestyle RIBA House of the Year.
series. His great strength is in his ability
to interact with the home-owners,
making it about them and not him… or at
least until his asides are edited in.
On the night, he certainly entertained
– effusive, endearing and engaging in
equal measure – telling us that the show’s
greatest legacy, perhaps, was its bingo
game, where there are extra points for
when the windows are late or when
someone gets pregnant… “I’m never
anything to do with that, of course.”
His stand-up routine moves from Slido
questions for the audience to favourite
home-owners he has met to solutions to
help combat climate change: “Around the
planet, currently, cooling accounts for
about 10 per cent of our electricity usage
and it’s set to triple by 2050, which is sort
of taking us in the wrong direction for
our carbon targets.” He offers a number
of building solutions that could help,
such as Pakistani windcatchers, Iranian
water towers and the traditional Arabic
mashrabiya. Mario Cucinella would
approve. Maybe the most appropriate
option, however, at least for this audience,
is to plant more trees: “If you do nothing
else as a community, plant some trees
in your street because all the research
suggests that streets with trees in them
in our towns and cities are between eight
and 12 degrees cooler”.
Everyone appears well amused and
interested throughout the evening
and, perhaps not surprisingly, my Slido
question as to why architects don’t
feature more prominently in Grand
Designs doesn’t make the cut.
Amanda Harkness
Warwick Fabrics Promotion

MATERIAL FOCUS:
WAKA KOTAHI NZTA
We talk to André Bankier-Perry
of Designgroup Stapleton Elliott
(DGSE) about the delivery of a 9000m2
government workplace fit-out, and how
social sustainability and sense of place
were pivotal throughout the scheme.
Tell us about the design rationale for this project.
DGSE worked alongside Waka Kotahi to distil their
aspirations around consolidation, environmental
outcomes, social sustainability and sense of place.
Pivotal to this was the shift to an ‘activity-based
working’ model, providing a spectrum of flexible
collaborative settings, focused work environments,
gathering zones and support facilities, while
maintaining consistency and familiarity across
the six levels. The building is situated within
the parliamentary precinct and overlooking
Wellington’s elevated arterial highway; the idea of
‘connectedness’ became a major design driver, both
in the physical sense of ‘place’ and through the
spirit of Waka Kotahi’s role in greater Aotearoa.

You mention social sustainability as a key

objective. What did this mean to Waka Kotahi
and how was this implemented?
As a values-based design practice, we find social
sustainability is fundamental to many of the
projects we work on. For Waka Kotahi, we set out
to enhance everyday experiences and end-user well-
being through design-led initiatives. Fresh, dynamic
and immersive environments lead to greater equity,
increased productivity and improved mental health.
Key moves included enhanced access to nature,
maximising daylight, places for faith and respite,
and destinations for communal interactions.
The material palette moves through a spectrum
of soft, earthy hues. How did the exploration of
connectedness and sense of place lead you to this?
We knew the palette needed to be expressive,
legible and timeless, shaped by a bespoke
te ao Māori narrative. Working in partnership
with DGSE’s Indigenous Design Rōpū (IDR),
a narrative was developed around ki uta ki tai,
from mountains to sea. This acknowledges
the balanced natural order of ecosystems –
a foundational characteristic that speaks to the
essence of Waka Kotahi’s role within Aotearoa.
The narrative is expressed within tactile
ABOVE Central breakout zones and
the café offer a variety of settings
in which to pause and recharge –
featuring Harrows’ Revive Chair in
Elton, Aspect’s Coco Chair in Vander,
Vidak’s BomBom Chair in Vander
and squabs in Elton. Photography by
Thomas Seear-Budd.
architectural surfaces and
through tonal variation,
gradually revealed as users
transition from floor to floor.
Tell us about the role fabrics played
in this colour story.
Fabrics were fundamental in pulling the
narrative through from space to space.
Upholstered joinery, squabs, furniture and
drapery were used as touchstones for users
ABOVE Warwick
to locate themselves within the building. Warwick
fabric swatches: Pelle
Fabrics are robust and cost-effective, while exuding Greenstone, Hawthorn
a rich, tactile quality. Bouclés, textural weaves, Manuka, Silvio Rug
Oakmoss, Zeus Ochre,
knitted suedes and wools provide a beautiful Akito Natural, Lustrell
residential feel and sense of respite. Moving up Charisma Tan, Atlas
the building, the palette gently shifts from earthy Amber, Casey Amber,
Vander Pumice and La
terracottas to muted verdant greens, smoky blues Casa Leather Taupe. Art
and ethereal, vapoury greys. direction by André Kini.

Architecture New Zealand 27

 Architecture NZ X Resene Colour Collab
Portrait: Supplied.
CHANTAL GAIQUI
As TOA Architects new head of
interiors, Chantal Gaiqui has a passion
for creating innovative and engaging
spatial design solutions, connecting
people to the land and the land to the
people: piki-a-rangi, para-a-nuku.
What led you into the world of architecture and design?
Prior to settling on interior design, I started out as a
performance pianist, studying BMus in Performance at
Auckland Uni. I was also part-time modelling and acting at
the time, and I took a few years out to focus on that fully.
I then moved from music to study architecture – I loved
the broad range and variety of skills, considerations and
opportunities that designing spaces and places brought together.
Architecture is very much like music but expressed in a visual/
spatial language as opposed to in sound. The maths, patterns,
harmonies, counterpoints, rhythms, proportions, ratios, colour,
texture, timbre, light… these are all parts of the fabric of both
worlds. I’ve been involved in commercial interior projects from
my start in architecture and this is where my passion lies.
Tell us about the use of colour in your work.
The senses and how we experience space is really important
to me and colour plays a big part in that. Colour (or lack of it)
can heighten or reduce certain feelings and emotions, invoke
memories, reference other things, indicate a mode or function,
speak of a community, culture or brand – it’s incredibly
powerful. Colour reflects or works in with the context of the
space, the place or the people in it. I often use colours of the
whenua in which the interior sits and its surroundings: so,
natural hues, layered, saturated, up or down. Hence, they
are colours that enhance what is inherent in the project,
conceptually and physically.
28 Architecture New Zealand
What influences your work?
Everything and anything inspires me, from film to fashion,
travel, fabric and music, to the anime my son is watching at the
moment. I love the patterns, textures and colours found in rocks,
stone and the earth; I have a slight obsession for photographing
our beautiful coastline rocks using a macro lens. I love watching
the latest runway shows and being drawn into the world the
designer of each show creates. I love Sabine Marcelis’ work with
pure forms, glass and resin, textures and graduating colour.
What was the thinking behind your collab?
The collab brings together Aotearoa (Maungawhau Mount
Eden and coastal rocks), Mauritius (Chamarel and the seven
colours of the earth) and Mallorca (Valldemossa and the
music Chopin created there). I love watching the grasses on
Maungawhau change through the seasons, listening to the
wind through the grass and the natural rhythms of the land,
and soaking up the volcanic colours and hues. The collab also
references the tones and variances in pigmentation within
our coastal rocks. My father was from Mauritius. We went
to Chamarel together: a geological formation in the Rivière
Noire with sand dunes called the seven colours of the earth
where weathered layers of basalt, iron oxides and aluminium
hydroxides have settled. From red to brown and blue to violet,
the particles naturally repel one another and are swirled by
the rain. I visited the beautiful village of Valldemossa in Spain
where Chopin wrote some of my favourite music – 24 preludes,
including the Raindrop Prelude Op.28, No.15. I associate every
key in music with a colour – with this piece, for me, it is Resene
Mahogany. The beautiful stone that covered every street in
Valldemossa was a blush tone. Walls were hand detailed, with
small stones pressed into the blush-toned mortar punctuated by
larger ones, creating beautiful artworks. The tones of the tiled
flooring of the monastery where Chopin lived were coral, peach
and blush. His music could be heard playing throughout the
monastery – it was a complete sensory delight.
How did you arrive at your colour choices?
The colour collab was so much fun. Thomas and I wanted
to create something that expressed a sensory moment in
time, with movement: something that felt magical and other-
worldly, rich in texture and colour saturated. The colours work
together in harmony and counterpoint, with the backdrop of
local rocks and shadows represented by Resene Mahogany and
the balls (raindrops or molecules of earth pigment) in Resene
Harvest Gold, Resene Whiskey Sour, Resene Coral Tree and
Resene Soothe.
Resene Resene Resene Resene Resene
Harvest Gold Whiskey Sour Coral Tree Soothe Mahogany
THIS PAGE
Resene Harvest
Gold, Resene
Soothe, Resene
Whiskey Sour and
Resene Coral Tree.
Art direction and
photography by
Thomas Cannings.
Across the Board

WEAVING A CONDUIT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE

Isabella Muirhead of Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland’s Te Pare School
of Architecture and Planning was the winner of the 2023 Te Kāhui Whaihanga Resene
Student Design Awards. Here, she describes her project, Common Ground.

01

Common Ground emerged as a response to a visceral
feeling of concern for our world, advocating for
heightened care towards the land, its people and
the future. Rooted in circumstances devoid of due
care – land management in Tairāwhiti – the research
underpinning Common Ground suggests that, when
environmental knowledge is depleted, unsustainable
practice ensues. The scheme aims to reverse this
trend by reinvigorating vernacular knowledge in a
tacit, hands-on manner, where spending time on the
land is imperative.
Situated at Hiwiroa Station, a relative’s farm north
of Tūranganui-a-kiwa Gisborne, Common Ground
speculates on a future ‘knowledge architecture’ for
a world grappling with environmental disaster. The
outcome is a ‘forum for vernacular environmental
knowledge’: a regional touchpoint fostering the
generation and proliferation of ideas. It aims to weave
diverse knowledge strands together in a simplified,
immersive space, seeking to strengthen the bond
between people and land.
Surviving challenges like Cyclone Gabrielle, which
left the farm inaccessible for weeks, Hiwiroa provides
an ideal canvas for testing architecture’s capacity to
engage in this complex discussion. Its landscape is
indicative of nationwide cultural and environmental
fractures: the river health is horrendous, forestry
slash is pervasive, low market prices make a good
income hard to achieve and cultural tensions are
high. Yet, with a 70-year history of bush regeneration,
it is also a landscape of healing; Hiwiroa is home
to the largest block of native ecology between
Gisborne and Tolaga Bay. A comprehensive master 01 Emerging
plan underpins the design proposal. It envisions bar-like from
the hillside, the
large-scale forest regeneration to supplement the building appears
existing bush, the restoration of traditional mahinga pinned to the
ground by two
kai, and strategically positioned farming corridors monumental
for a downsized sheep and beef operation. Land-use fireplaces.

30 Architecture New Zealand

 02 Part wharekai,
decisions prioritise the terrain’s suitability over sheer part classroom,
productivity, fostering a balance between ecological part convention
centre, the
preservation and responsible agricultural practices. conversation
Responding to the unique context of Aotearoa, chamber is the
heart of the
particularly the coexistence of multiple unique
scheme.
strands of knowledge within a colonised territory,
03 Lightly
the architecture intentionally avoids programmatic sheltered, the
specificity and formal historical reference. The spatial multidisciplinary
workshop utilises
organisation aligns with the steps of knowledge air, water and fire.
creation, utilising the plan as a diagram where
04 The floor
knowledge intersects with nature and people. The plan calls on
integration of an existing farm woolshed into the the principles
of weaving to
fabric of the building, along with the creation of a generate spaces
corresponding ‘plant shed’, embodies the holistic for learning.
approach. A workshop and conversation chamber 05 Sectionally,
the scheme works
offer spaces for learning through making and 02
with the datum
talking, with each fuelling the other, creating a self- of the existing
perpetuating knowledge ecosystem. The building woolshed,
burrowing into
itself, clad in woven flax panels, becomes a perpetual the earth at
project – a teaching tool for craft. A curated approach one end while
hovering over it
to materiality ensures that the entire structure is at the other.
fabricated from onsite resources, including earth, flax,
recycled timber and recycled corrugated iron.
The project elevates marginalised knowledge,
notably that of Aotearoa’s indigenous forest ecology,
as a pivotal force in averting future environmental
damage. This core value is present not only in the
architecture but in the site strategy and proposed
activities. By re-imagining the conventional
dichotomy between farming and reforestation,
the scheme navigates the complexity of land
management head-on, positioning architecture not
as a panacea but as a conduit for discussion within 03
the battleground of the land.
Beyond the physical space, Common Ground
aims to foster inclusive dialogue, extending
beyond key community figures to encompass
wider circles and the general public. While the
architectural intervention may appear extensive
for the chronically undervalued East Coast region,
its primary aim is to push boundaries and nurture
aspirations – locally and beyond – creating a lasting
positive impact on the relationship between people,
04
knowledge and the environment.

05

Architecture New Zealand 31

Practice in Profile

Te taura
whakairo:
the continuing
tradition
TOITŪ TE WHENUA, TOITŪ TE TIKANGA,
KA ORA NGĀ TOI.
WHEN WE HOLD FAST TO OUR LAND
–
This year’s Te Kāhui
Whaihanga Gold Medallist,
AND VALUES, OUR ARTS AND Deidre Brown, discusses her
ARCHITECTURE FLOURISH. journey through architecture –
through research, teaching
It is a great and unexpected honour to receive
the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute
and practice – as she follows
of Architects Gold Medal. It places me within the evolution of Māori
a whakapapa of architects whom I have always and Pacific design.
greatly admired and provides a platform from
which to communicate architecture’s importance.
It also prompts one to reflect on one’s own
contribution to architecture. The kaupapa of this
essay is to discuss my work as a journey through
architecture.
I only ever wanted to be an architect when I
was growing up, which was an unusual ambition
for a Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Kahu girl from West
Auckland. My timing was appalling. I entered the
University of Auckland School of Architecture
in 1989, 18 months after the stock market crash,
with little prospect of finding employment as an
architect after graduation. But, by then, I had
found something that would influence the rest
of my career: Māori architecture. I stayed at the
School, completing a post-professional master’s
thesis under Sarah Treadwell’s supervision and
a PhD with Mike Linzey and Mike Austin. My
doctoral thesis argued that Māori buildings and
their designers have a whakapapa: a lineage of
concepts, practices and values passed between
generations of makers who adapt them to suit the
uniquely Māori needs of the communities they
serve. To demonstrate this, I examined a century 01 Deidre at
her marae,
of building that Bill McKay had called ‘Mōrehu’ Mangaiti in
(Survivor), which began with kīngitanga pātaka Kaeo, with
her two sons.
(raised storehouses) in the 1850s and ended with Photograph by
the construction of Rātana churches. Grant Bulley.

01

32 Architecture New Zealand

Practice in Prof ile
Supported by

Architecture New Zealand 33

 Practice in Profile

before World War Two. There were two very

different styles led by protagonists who were
clearly at odds with one another politically,
socially and spiritually. The first were the
innovative Romanesque churches and Spanish 02 Aaron Sills,
Haare Williams
Mission-style community buildings built by and Deidre at the
Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana and his eponymous Raetihi Rātana
Church in 2018.
church and political party; the second was the Photograph by
whare whakairo (decorated meeting houses) Grant Bulley.
revival of the Tūrangawaewae Carving School, 03 Hīona
established by Te Puea Hērangi, and the School meeting and
courthouse, with
of Māori Arts and Crafts, founded by Āpirana the community’s
Ngata. Although both styles spread rapidly leader Rua
Kēnana and some
across the North Island, only the whare whakairo of his kin, at
style has continued to be built. This is because Maungapōhatu,
of the inter-generational knowledge transfer 1908. Photograph
from the
perpetuated by Te Puea and Ngata’s schools, A.P. Godber
something which was not part of the Rātana Collection,
courtesy of
movement. Alexander
02 Two findings emerged from the thesis: first, Turnbull Library,
APG-1679-1/2-G.
how important teaching and learning is to
04 Āpirana Ngata
making a real difference in architecture. The leading the haka
second was how influential the 19th century at the opening of
In between were: Pai Mārire movement niu poles was on the social, political, built and natural Whare Runanga at
Waitangi in 1940:
and flags; Ringatū Church wharenui (meeting environments of this country. The New Zealand a project by the
houses); Māori parliaments; the kāinga of Wars had a devastating effect, extending far School of Māori
Arts and Crafts.
Parihaka, Maungapōhatu and Tūrangawaewae; beyond the conflict zones; this will take a long Photograph
and the wharenui and wharekai of the School time to repair. Before that time, whānau and courtesy of
Alexander
of Māori Arts and Crafts. I cut my teeth on hapū were self-sufficient and had tikanga-based Turnbull Library,
library and archival research for this project, at economies that sometimes involved trade with MNZ-2746-1/2-F.
a time when there were no digital resources or
catalogues, and interviewed kaumātua, learning
the most important values for anyone working in
Indigenous architecture: listening.
Around 300 Mōrehu structures were discussed
in the thesis. They were the social, political,
spiritual and architectural infrastructure for
tino rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination)
before, during and after the New Zealand Wars.
Before colonisation, Māori society was primarily
organised as hapū (subtribes) and had distinct
regional artistic and architectural practices.
Through their resistance to colonisation and
steadfast determination to hold on to their
lands, Māori sought the amalgamation of
hapū and iwi into the pan-tribal and national
groups mentioned above. These buildings
were sometimes created with European tools,
materials and forms, yet their use was resolutely
and autonomously Māori.
The research also identified a pivot point in
03
Māori architecture and art that occurred just

34 Architecture New Zealand

 04

non-Māori; these are the sort of engagement

and systems that enable architecture to thrive.
Initiatives like the teaching of Aotearoa New
Zealand history in schools will make visible
histories that too many generations of New
Zealanders have been conditioned to regard 05 A kūwaha
as ‘the past’, and inspire our rangatahi to find pātaka
(storehouse
pathways for a better future. doorway)
The Mōrehu period was followed by the identified by
emergence of contemporary practice and Deidre’s recent
research as
preceded by several centuries of Māori depicting
architecture that itself continued a tradition the ancestor
Nukutawhiti, at
of building in Oceania measured in millennia. the Humboldt
A lecturing appointment to the University of Forum,
Berlin, 2023.
Canterbury School of Fine Arts between 1998 Photograph by
05
and 2003 offered the opportunity to teach Māori Grant Bulley.

Architecture New Zealand 35

 Practice in Profile

art and architectural history, and research the becomes abundantly clear that the former has
customary and contemporary periods of these not enjoyed the same profile as has the latter in
related practices. While in Christchurch, I joined terms of participation, understanding, education
the southern branch of Ngā Puna Waihanga and visibility over the past 50 years. This is a
(the Māori Artists and Writers Association) and result of Māori urbanisation (and the weakening
learned raranga, tāniko and muka (harakeke/ or loss of connections to marae), the enduring
New Zealand flax fibre) extraction in weaving social and economic legacies of colonisation,
wānanga run by Cath Brown (Ngāi Tahu; no land alienation and the ‘professionalisation’ of
relation). the building industry (which reduced the design
It was an exciting time to be in Christchurch contribution of tohunga), all of which are well-
and working with excellent academic mentors. known factors. Yet, emerging during the same
Hundreds of graduates, informed about Māori period was a strong Māori contemporary art
art and architecture, emerged as well as three movement, which is widely regarded as having 06 Deidre (far
books and four curated group exhibitions in its roots in the establishment of the Department right) teaching
Design 2 in 2005
public galleries: Tai Tokerau Whakairo Rākau: of Education’s Māori Arts Advisory Service after at Fale Pasifika,
Northland Māori Wood Carving (2003), a the Second World War. The service’s advisors Waipapa
Taumata Rau
history and catalogue of taonga from the region, embedded a Māori arts-based curriculum in University of
now in public collections; Māori Arts of the schools, which included drawing, painting, Auckland.
Gods and Introducing Māori Art (both 2005),
two different ways of understanding Māori art
and architecture, illustrated with photographs
from the Brian Brake collection; and Hiko! New
Energies in Māori Art (Robert McDougall Art
Gallery, 1999), Techno Maori: Māori Art in the
Digital Age (City Gallery Wellington and Pātaka,
Porirua, 2001), Whare (SoFA Gallery, 2002) and
LightSCAPE (multiple Christchurch venues,
2004). Exhibitions provided an unconstrained
opportunity to explore what Māori spaces could
be. Looking back at them now, these shows were
about the decolonisation and re-indigenisation
of space through the creation of new artefacts,
digital media, sound and, most importantly of
all, tikanga Māori.
At the end of 2003, I returned to the University
of Auckland for a senior lectureship at the
School of Architecture and Planning. The School
had changed considerably and positively under
the leadership of Errol Haarhoff and stewardship
of the permanent and sessional staff. It was more
focused on teaching and research excellence and
the studios had been renovated and digitised to
resemble contemporary practice environments.
Here, I broadened my teaching platform to
include New Zealand and Pacific architecture,
and increased my production of articles and
chapters on customary and contemporary
Māori architecture, culminating in the book,
Māori Architecture: from Fale to Wharenui
and Beyond (2009).
When comparing Māori architecture to other
06
Māori visual arts in Aotearoa New Zealand, it

36 Architecture New Zealand

 07 08

sculpture, ceramics and performance but did not construction of contemporary types of carved
extend to space-making. The advisors themselves meeting house as well as suggesting adaptations
became the founders of Māori modernism: Cath of the art for use in private and public buildings.
Brown, John Bevan Ford, Ralph Hotere, Fred Probably slowness in the integration of Māori
Graham, Paratene Matchitt, Katarina Mataira, art into New Zealand cultural life is due as much
Cliff Whiting and Arnold Wilson, to name a to the absence of a body of Māori specialists
few. While many of these artists contributed to organised for propaganda purposes, as to 07 Māori
buildings through their community co-designed anything else.”1 In my lifetime, Te Whaihanga Architecture: from
Fale to Wharenui
murals and sculptures, they did not design and Ngā Aho have attempted to fill the absence and Beyond book
buildings. Winiata identified. cover (2009).
High entrance criteria to enter architecture The roadblocks mentioned earlier have not 08 Rewi
Thompson
training programmes, compared to those for inhibited the development of a contemporary
(Ngāti Porou,
visual and performing arts, has effectively locked Māori architecture, which has found expression Ngāti Raukawa),
Māori out of participating in the profession. in a small but growing number of commissions. Aronui Trust
Carvers, Whaiora
A reduced visibility of contemporary Māori The contributions of John Scott (Ngāti Marae, ‘Fish
architecture (defined here as architecture Kahungunu) and Rewi Thompson (Ngāti Porou, Canopy’ (1987)
[head], Ōtara
designed by and/or with Māori) outside of marae Ngāti Raukawa) have been the subjects of Town Centre,
contexts can be attributed to low numbers of books. Wiremu (Bill) Royal (Ngāti Raukawa) Tāmaki Makaurau
Auckland.
Māori architectural designers. Only through is a less-talked-about figure, at least outside Image: Bronwyn
educating practitioners and the public will of the South Island, whose Māori modernist Holloway-Smith,
Public Art
the understanding and visibility of Māori architecture urgently needs to be documented.
Heritage Aotearoa
architecture increase. The agitation for this to Tere Insley was the first Māori woman registered New Zealand,
happen has existed from at least 1957, when architect who forged a path for others to 2021.

the educator, anthropologist and broadcaster follow. DesignTRIBE, directed by Rau Hoskins
Maharaia Winiata wrote in the journal, Te Ao (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi), Chris Sage and Maurits REFERENCES
Hou, “Perhaps the best place for the advanced Kelderman, celebrates its 30th anniversary this 1
Papers Past,
study of Māori arts and crafts is in the suggested year as a tikanga-led practice collaborating with Magazines and
Journals, Te Ao
school of design projected for Auckland. One communities, and public and private clients. Hou, August 1957,
can visualise students, both Māori and Pākehā, Anyone visiting TOA Architects’ (directed ‘The Future of
Maori Arts
making an intensive study of Māori art and by Nicholas Dalton, Te Arawa, Ngāi Tūhoe, and Crafts’
working out ways and means of assisting in the Tūwharetoa) Taumata o Kupe (2022) building (natlib.govt.nz).

Architecture New Zealand 37

 Practice in Profile

09 Taumata o Kupe,
TOA Architects,
opened 2022.
Photograph by
David Straight.
10 The MĀPIHI:
Māori and Pacific
Housing Research
Centre team. Back
row, left to right:
Dr Sam Manuela,
Dr Kilisimasi
Latu, Dr ’Ema
Wolfgramm-Foliaki,
Associate Professor
Vili Nosa, Dr
Charmaine ’Ilaiū
Talei, Dr Tumanako
Ngawhika Fa’aui,
Dr Michael Davis.
Front row: Peseta
Fa’amatuainu
To’oto’oolea’ava
Lama Tone,
Professor Deidre
Brown, Dr Karamia
Müller, Professor
Anthony Hōete
and Lena Henry.
Photograph courtesy
of Waipapa Taumata
09 Rau University of
Auckland.

10

38 Architecture New Zealand

 GET THE LOOK
at Te Mahurehure Marae in Auckland would leave ON YOUR WALLS
feeling that Māori contemporary architecture is at
the cutting edge of both toi Māori (Māori cultural
expression) and contemporary architectural design.
Matakohe Architecture + Urbanism, founded by
Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea, Te Arawa)
in Whangārei, demonstrates that the centres of
Māori architecture are not necessarily located in
cities, but in regions where there are strong mana
whenua communities.
Soon after I finished my term as Head of the
School of Architecture and Planning in 2021,
Resene Muka™
I established the MĀPIHI: Māori and Pacific
Research Centre with 20 other Māori and Pacific
academics at my university. Its purpose is to deliver
research to support Māori and Pacific whānau to
live in healthy, sustainable and affordable homes.
We have started our centre by co-creating research
with hapū, iwi, communities, NGOs, local and
central government agencies, practices and other
research entities. Our objectives are ambitious:
to create the knowledge, design and construction
techniques, workforce and policy advice needed Resene Hinau™
for transformational change in housing quality and
supply. As a university-level research centre, we
have grown a PhD cohort of more than a dozen
mainly architecture and engineering candidates,
many of whom are of Māori and Pacific descent,
to be the next generation of designers, academics
and change-makers. They talk about postgraduate
programmes offering them freedoms not possible
in practice and future careers in an expanded field
that combines teaching, research and practice. Resene Waiwherowhero™
The research questions that they are exploring are
different from anything that has been done before
and speak to a continuing tradition of architecture
that is ever evolving and unfolding for the benefit of
communities and the profession of architecture. It
is a privilege being part of their journey and those
of the hundreds (if not over a thousand) of other
students I have taught. I continue to seek new ways
that I can contribute to the architecture of our
country and the well-being of its people.
Resene Kakaramea™

Deidre Brown’s go-to four colours

from the Resene Traditional Māori
Dr Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) is a
colour palette
Professor of Architecture at Te Pare School of
Architecture and Planning, Waipapa Taumata
Rau University of Auckland. She teaches, supervises
and researches Māori architectural and art history,
and Māori and Pacific housing.
www.resene.co.nz
0800 RESENE (737 363)
 GEOMETRIC SURPRISE
Architect Henri Sayes of Sayes Studio
embraces the curve in one of his
most recent projects – his own home.
Amanda Harkness takes a closer look
at the thinking behind the design.
Architects’ own homes are special, revealing as much
about what inspires them as their willingness to
experiment. In Henri Sayes’ most recent abode, there’s
some homage to Aalto’s Maison Louis Carré on the
outskirts of Paris (1956), where a sinuous, curved ceiling
deftly guides guests from entry to living. Here, too, there
is a layering of form with function, which creates both
privacy and a place to present art.
But it’s Sayes’ appetite for experimentation, seen across
a series of moments, both exterior and interior, that stands
out. The house form is an asymmetric gable with strong,
angular geometry, cranked brick walls and an amplified,
black, cedar-clad soffit. In contrast, the interior is much
softer, with circular and arched motifs repeating in both
plan and section.
Split levels and gradients of ceiling height work cleverly
to delineate space within the open-plan area of the
compact house, with a curved ceiling emphasising the
spatial shift from the familiar 2.4m dimension in the living
room, raking upwards to a lofty 5.0m at its peak, above the
kitchen and dining area. Beside this space, a curved stair
proves an efficient way to transition the 11 steps from one
level to the next in a limited footprint.
Without an architrave or a skirting board in sight, the
walls of this house become a seamless backdrop across
which the light traverses and plays with magical effect.
Somehow, despite their 10mm thickness, these walls seem
to have heft and yet it is the lightness of material which
enabled Sayes to create such a sculptural experience.
“You can cut or wet the back of GIB and it essentially
bows itself and curves really nicely, like a living gypsum
paper,” he explains. “It seems a very natural thing to do.”
The curve motif builds an interior language that runs
through the entire project, from the landscaping to the
kitchen island, the entry area and the stair. “It’s about how
you can roll from one space to another,” says Sayes. “It adds
a softness to how you move, rather than encountering a
series of abrupt transitions.”
After such apparent success – the house won a Te Kāhui
Whaihanga National Architecture Award for Housing last
year – will we see more of the curve in Sayes’ work? “In
my world, you do something and then you’ve done it,” says
the architect. “And then you want to do something else.”
We look forward to the next instalment.

THIS SPREAD Brick House. Imagery: David Straight.

40 Architecture New Zealand

Interior Spaces presented by
The Pā at the University of Waikato. Photograph: Simon Devitt.

Towards an old architecture – The Pā, University of Waikato

Architectus, Jasmax and designTRIBE — p.44
Culture and collegiality – Te Rangihīroa, University of Otago Jasmax — p.56
Home on the lease – Studio House William Samuels Architects — p.66
Masters of manipulation – Precinct Properties’ head office Warren and Mahoney — p.76
Work
Towards
an old
architecture
In his navigation of
the complex territory
of critique, Anthony
Hōete finds an
emergent force in play
at Te Whare Wānanga
o Waikato University
of Waikato’s The Pā,
designed in
collaboration by
Architectus, Jasmax
and designTRIBE.
Photography
SIMON DEVITT

LEFT Towards the pōwhiri

section of waharoa, lawn
ātea, front mahau, wharenui,
rear mahau, the student hub,
and the Faculty of Māori and
Indigenous Studies. In the
foreground are heroically
scaled raised garden beds
that balance the roof mass
and frame the ātea, which
can accommodate a 700sqm
marquee.

Architecture New Zealand 45

 Work

01

NEW ZEALAND IS A SMALL COUNTRY WITH We are fortunate that the practice of creating and
few architects. Where Britain has 42,170 registered building marae has been uninterrupted and ongoing
architects in a population of 67 million, or one per since Māori arrived in Aotearoa. By the late 19th
1600 persons, New Zealand has rather fewer, with one Century, marae building had accelerated from the 01 Arrival at
the waharoa
architect per 2200 persons.1 Yet, only 68 or three per 1860s to the 1890s to help re-assert Māori identity is through
cent of New Zealand registered architects are Māori2 in the face of land wars and ongoing colonisation. In an existing
wooded cluster
(try naming some). That’s one per 78,400. Given the last 50 years, we have seen new marae emerge.
of established
this inequity, the Māori architectural critic stands Hoskins articulates a taxonomy of five: native
in a vulnerable space. Māori critique is enacted not • Taura here Marae: cater to urban tribal members to vegetation
(tōtara, kōwhai,
through words written but through words spoken: link them back to their iwi/tribal homelands. For cabbage trees),
as kanohi-ki-te-kanohi hui and wānanga, involving example, Te Tira Hou marae (1973, Ngāi Tūhoe) is pruned to
face-to-face robust discussion. The dismantling and a place of refuge for many young Tūhoe who moved reveal vistas
through to
reassembling of ideas is a Māori method of learning. to Tāmaki seeking work. Mataatua, in Māngere, is the building.
Yet, like parliamentary debate, differences of opinion another example of a marae beyond the rohe (in this Not evident in
are voiced, sometimes heated, but always welcome. case, the ancestral land of Ngāti Awa). the image on
the previous
An architectural review of Māori by Māori thus • Mataawaka Marae: dedicated to urban Māori from page, the use of
requires a new form of localised critique. Aside multiple iwi living in a particular area of a city, for vegetation to
screen arrival
from the disconnect of a Letter to the Editor, example, Hoani Waititi Marae in Glen Eden. views helps
there is no right of reply. So, I asked Rau Hoskins • Hapū Marae: the original and most common marae offset the mass
of designTRIBE, representing one of the project’s are customarily located on the founding kāinga where of the building.
Landscape
three architectural firms, to peer review this members of the community belong to a specific hapū mitigates
journal article. or subtribe. architecture.

46 Architecture New Zealand

 02

02
A landscaped
gully links the
three campus
lakes to the
Hillcrest ridge.
At the top of
the stairs, one
passes through
a pivotal
central terrace
that connects
the existing
library to a
grand loggia,
activated by the
SITE PLAN
Student Hub.

Architecture New Zealand 47

 Work

• National Marae: occupy the national consciousness, like The Beehive and The Cake Tin. In a departure 03 Adjacent to the
front mahau is the
with arguably three in Aotearoa: Te Papa in the from the reigning institutional convention, whilst entry to the Vice-
Museum of New Zealand; Tūrangawaewae, the the ingoa Māori was not gifted, the building’s name Chancellor’s office.
headquarters for the Māori King Movement; and the will likely enter everyday discourse and bring Māori The projecting
volume, at the first-
Whare Rūnanga or ‘top marae’ at Waitangi, adjacent architecture closer to the cohort. floor level, is the
to where Te Tiriti was signed. A Pā is strategically located, with the summit boardroom of the
office of the Vice-
• Institutional Marae: adopted by academic reserved for rangatira. As the last line of defence,
Chancellor.
institutions. Examples include Te Herenga Waka a Pā assumes the highest status. And so it is with
04–05 At the
marae (1980), the first to be established at Victoria The Pā. When Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil centre of The Pā
University of Wellington; Waipapa marae at the Quigley arrived at the University of Waikato in lies the project’s
University of Auckland (1988), Ngā Wai o Horotiu 2015, he was surprised by the humble nature of the form generator,
the wharenui Ko te
marae at AUT (1997); Te Noho Kotahitanga marae, existing marae. As he learnt about the mana whenua, Tangata. The name
Unitec (2009); and, Te Rau Karamu marae, Massey kīngitanga (Māori king movement) and raupatu (land of the wharenui,
For the People,
University Wellington (2021). confiscation), Quigley recognised the need for the
derives from the
The latest addition to Institutional Marae is the marae to be elevated in profile, with the University’s University’s motto.
shrewdly named The Pā at the University of Waikato. most prominent location. And so, the site is on the Ko te Tangata
can accommodate
According to Hoskins, when one of the jury, Associate summit line, a literal hillcrest in Hillcrest, Kirikiriroa. large-scale events
Professor Te Kahautu Maxwell, saw the Architectus Jasmax, one of the three architects, described this for up to 1000
submission (“The Pā”, not Te Pā), he proclaimed: as the most ambitious building in the University people and up to
90 people for noho
“That’s it – that’s the name!” The colloquial of Waikato’s history. Perhaps in New Zealand marae (overnight
accessibility of this name is endearing and enduring, university history. stays).

04

03 05

48 Architecture New Zealand

 So, where is the innovation in The Pā? Here are forthcoming book on Mātauranga Māori) as the
‘Seven Points Towards a New Māori Architecture’.3 kauhanganui. It’s a liminal space which ran down
1. The concept is immediately legible for pōwhiri. the centre of pre-colonial whare and “knowledge of
06 Rather than
During the welcoming ceremony, what you see is it influenced the design of whare and what could be terminate at the
what you get. Little is hidden. A trope of modernism done in that space”.4 With ancient Māori construction tāhuhu (ridge
beam), the heke
has been to signal political transparency through techniques (such as mīmiro),5 there was no structural
(rafters) criss-
architectural transparency. The iconic frontality of reason for the pou tokomanawa (central ridge pole). cross and extend
the amo-maihi gable, typical to most post-colonial And so it is with The Pā. As the glulam portals well beyond the
wharenui. On
wharenui, is also evident to the visitor in Ko te require no interstitial support, the door is free to the northern
Tangata, the University wharenui. Yet the maihi migrate back to the middle. With traditional whare side, these
continue well beyond the tekoteko, criss-crossing construction methods, the tāhuhu (ridge beam) still 36.4m-long heke
are propped to
and extending into the sky. From the ātea, the parti needs central support at the rear wall and outside the form glulam
is apparent; the section is the form generator of mahau/porch line when the door is located centrally portals and
create an aisle.
the overall project. A sequence of portals is visible, – as is the case with Taranaki and Whanganui whare,
This spatial
too, upholding the rhythm of poupou-heke. Yet, the which maintain a central front door. arrangement
novelty of this structural arrangement speaks of a 3. The front mahau has been supersized. The porch is not unlike
a Renaissance
heritage transformed. in whare Māori is unique and not evidenced in church, except,
2. The central whare door departs from the asymmetry other buildings of Te Moananui, such as fale, fare with The Pā, the
of the usual door to the left. In this case, a central and hale (Samoa, Tahiti and Hawai’i). The mahau, a two aisles are
taller than the
door denotes the house as a whare wānanga and transitional space between indoors and out, emerged central wharenui
invokes what Tā Hirini Moko Mead refers to (in his as a practical response to keeping the entry area as nave.

10

06

Architecture New Zealand 49

 Work

07

07

dry and as a sheltered space to remain connected breakout spaces and a student hub that extends,
to the broader activities of the marae ātea and via a 6m-wide bleacher stair, to the Faculty of Māori
kāinga. In some contemporary wharenui, the mahau and Indigenous Studies. The back of the whare is,
is evolving to be a covered exterior space capable suddenly, a whole lot more interesting.
of accommodating activities in its own right. At 5. The whare has evolved into a multi-sided building. 07 Activated
a recent Vā Moana symposium, Hoskins spoke of Hoskins cites the relevance of the cruciform whare by events
offered from
The Pā mahau as fulfilling core traditional hui and wānanga Te Miringa Te Kakara at Waimiha (1887),
the rear
wānanga functions and being transformed through built in the shape of a cross. It had four entrances mahau, Te
the interconnections and ‘co-location’ with other and four mahau. This whare provides an historical Āhurutanga:
the Student
tertiary functions. At The Pā, the mahau is now precedent for the contemporary Pā. Distributed along Hub is
10m – perhaps the deepest in the country. Designed one length of the wharenui is the Vice-Chancellor’s designed
to facilitate whakatau (informal welcomes), hui and Office and senior leadership co-located with the as a central
meeting space
teaching activities, this dimension recognises the University executive, symbolising a Treaty-based that can be
inclement Hamilton weather and the Waikato-Tainui relationship. Along the other length is a north-facing configured to
accommodate
kawa of holding pōwhiri and important hui outdoors. loggia that connects to the existing library.
up to 600
4. The wharenui has an active rear elevation and a 6. The interior light was made cultural. As Te Ari people in
double-ended mahau. The back of the whare is now Prendergast has written,6 Māori architecture theatre mode
or 350 in
an architectural focus. The rear mahau is, however, engages with narrative and often employs pūrākau banquet mode.
not accessible to the interior and thus maintains the to tell stories with underlying meaning. The Pā In this image,
tikanga (protocol) of the whare. The rear mahau includes a narrative of ‘whare as light’. Whilst we can see the
two aisles, one
instead acts as a stage and activates a generous activated on all four sides, no side or rear windows on each side of
central atrium, incorporating food retailers, exist. Whilst the wharenui can be deep and dark, the wharenui.

50 Architecture New Zealand

 08 The
interiorised
aisle between
the wharenui
and the Office
of the Vice-
Chancellor
leads to the
Student Hub.

09 The
boardroom
of the Office
of the Vice-
Chancellor has
a view of the
ātea. This is
demonstrative
09 of the close
working
relationship
between the
interior light was culturated, with poupou not lit University’s
by halogens but illuminated from within, creating a executive
and Māori
sense of māramatanga or enlightenment.
leadership.
7. The whakaruruhau is formed from a single gesture:
heke emanate from the wharenui to unite four
‘buildings’ under one (mega-butterfly) roof. The
whakaruruhau connects the wharenui to the east,
the University’s executive wing to the south, a
central student hub, and the refurbished Faculty
REFERENCES
of Māori and Indigenous Studies to the west. The 1
As at 13
proximity of the office of the Vice-Chancellor to the February 2024,
there were
wharenui is startling. Between Māori and Pākehā, 2320 architects
CONCEPT SKETCH
adjacency creates agency. registered with
NZRAB in a
So, how was such innovation made possible? population of
5.1 million.
The role played by the mana whenua, Waikato- 2
NZRAB Annual
Tainui, and their relationship with the University Report 2021–
2022, Ethnicity,
was crucial. As long as Waikato-Tainui remained p. 24.
present through the design, build and occupancy, 3
As opposed to:
then the mana of The Pā would be upheld. Waikato- en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Le_
Tainui owned the whenua, which was returned as Corbusier%27s_
Five_Points_of_
part of a Treaty settlement in 1995. Mindful of the Architecture
vulnerability of the institutional marae client, Tainui 4
Email from Tā
Moko Mead,
established the University as the anchor tenant. This dated 15
joint venture demonstrates the capabilities of New February 2024.
5
Refer to my
Zealand architecture when there is confidence in the research with
occupancy of whenua. Dr Jeremy
Treadwell and
The architect’s desire for innovation must Ngāti Ira o
Waioweka. eqc.
be balanced by tradition. In advancing Māori govt.nz/news/
Architecture, the role of ‘conservative kaumātua’ endangered-
maori-
remains vital to debate, test and contend with any construction-
resistance/acceptance of new ideas. This generation methods-
pass-modern-
typically carries the mātauranga and needs to be seismic-testing-
demands/
comfortable enacting traditions within new settings 6
Te Ari
to make the experience familiar and safe for all Prendergast,
‘Te Pūatatangi:
parties. The kotahitanga of the three architectural A chorus of
offices, Architectus, designTRIBE and Jasmax, is: voices’, Te Kāhui
Whaihanga
Partnership in (architectural) Practice. In reaching NZIA Auckland
new heights with The Pā, collectively, they produced Branch
08 newsletter,
an international exemplar of indigenous innovation. 2023, pp. 4–5.

Architecture New Zealand 51

Work

Project
Information
LOCATION Gate 8,
University of Waikato
Hamilton campus
SITE AREA 14,600m2
FLOOR AREA 7100m2
STOREYS Three to six levels
TIME SCHEDULE
Design, documentation: 30 months
Construction: 30 months
CLIENT Te Whare Wānanga o
Waikato University of Waikato
ARCHITECTS
Architectus: James Mooney,
Patrick Clifford, Jeremy Purcell,
Kitty Fan, Amelia Fagence, Carmen
Fu, Chirag Jindal, Claire Brunelat,
Elizabeth Seuseu, Hannah Diack,
Hermann Matamu, John Baker,
Lauren Speer, Lu Cheng, Lucy Vete,
Maggie Xu, Michael Thomson,
Sara Nazem, Tom Johnson, William
Anderson, William Brooks
Jasmax: Richard Harris,
Neil Martin, Stephen Middleton,
EXPLODED ISOMETRIC SHOWS COLOUR-CODED DISTRIBUTION OF FUNCTIONS
Andrew Grant, Paul Lelieveld,
Vincent Kumar, Claire
O’Shaughnessy, Aaron Troy,
Abby Morgan, Adam Jepson,
Azza Ho, Erinna Wong,
Icao Tiseli, Jessica Mount,
Kahu Eruera, Kathryn Roberts,
Kimmy Deng, Lukas Havlicek,
3 Luke Szokalski, Marianne Riley,
1 Nick Scarles, Nikki Senekal,
2
Rameka Alexander-Tu’inukuafe
CROSS-SECTION designTRIBE: Rau Hoskins,
Paul Addison
1 HUB 2 WHARENUI 3 VICE-CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE
ARTISTS He kupu maioha ki
Te Tari o Te Kiingitanga: The
University is grateful to the Office
of the Kiingitanga for support and
guidance throughout the project,
including the commissioning of the
artistic teams – carvers under the
guidance of Renata Te Wiata, and
weavers under the guidance of
Te Puhi Ariki Nga wai hono i te po
Paki, James Schuster (ONZM) and
NORTH ELEVATION
Cathy Schuster. Tēnā koutou katoa.

52 Architecture New Zealand

M[m[h[fh_l_b[][ZjeYecfb[c[djJ^[FĻm_j^9h[ijb_d[\khd_jkh[$$$
WifWY[ie]eeZ"j^[ijkZ[djim_bbbeea\ehmWhZjeCedZWocehd_d]i

Yh[ijb_d[$Ye$dp%fhe`[Yj%j^[#fW%
Work

BUILDER Hawkins
5
STRUCTURAL,
HYDRAULIC,
MECHANICAL AND
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER,
FIRE, LIGHTING,
SURVEYOR AND
GEOTECHNICAL
CONSULTANT Beca
4
FAÇADE ENGINEER
Mott MacDonald
1 LANDSCAPING
3 2
Wraight + Associates, Jasmax
QUANTITY SURVEYOR
Rider Levett Bucknall
ACOUSTICS CONSULTANT
Marshall Day Acoustics
PLANNING CONSULTANT
Boffa Miskell
PROJECT MANAGER
N
Colliers
FIRST-FLOOR PLAN
STRUCTURE Timberlab,
1 VC OFFICE 3 FMIS – TE PUA WĀNANGA KI TE AO 5 STUDENT CENTRE – TE MANAWA Waikato Steel
2 STAFF CLUB 4 STUDENT HUB – TE ĀHURUTANGA
ROOFING AND SOFFITS
RoofLogic, Trespa, Symonite,
Hermpac
WALLS Hermpac, Sculptform,
11
12 USG, Asona, Ecophon,
Rockfon, Décortech
WINDOWS APL, Metro
13
Performance Glass, Insol
DOORS APL
3
15 FLOORING Jacobsen,
10
2
Husqvarna, Hermpac,
1
Heritage Carpets
LIGHTING Impressions
6

7
4 Lighting
9

8
FURNITURE Crestline
5
14
INTERIOR PRODUCTS
Resco, Caroma, Dolphin,
Autex, Hermpac, Lotus,
Allegion, Luxaflex,
Altex Coatings, Resene
BESPOKE FURNITURE
Crestline

GROUND-FLOOR PLAN

1 STUDENT HUB – TE ĀHURUTANGA 6 S BLOCK (LECTURE THEATRES) 11 STUDENT CENTRE – TE MANAWA

2 WHARENUI – KO TE TANGATA 7 KITCHEN – TE KŌPŪROA 12 CAMPUS HIGH STREET
3 MARAE ĀTEA 8 CONFERENCE/EVENTS – TE KŌPŪROA 13 NORTH TERRACE
4 VC OFFICE 9 INFORMAL LEARNING 14 SOUTHERN ENTRY
5 SERVICE/STORAGE 10 FOOD COURT 15 CONNECTOR

54 Architecture New Zealand

Meet the New San Selmo Bricks

250 x 55 x 70 mm

thebrickery.co.nz
 Work

Culture and
collegiality
John Walsh visits
Te Rangihīroa,
the University of
Otago’s new hall of
residence designed
by Jasmax, and finds
a big building with
much to say about
student welfare
and the university’s
engagement with
te ao Māori.
Photography
JASMAX / XANDER DIXON

RIGHT
The University of Otago’s
new residential college,
Te Rangihīroa, the massive
occupant of a prominent
campus-adjacent site in
north Dunedin.

56 Architecture New Zealand

 Work
01
TE RANGIHĪROA IS THE FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT
college at New Zealand’s most collegiate university
since the Ted McCoy-designed UniCol opened in
1969. If its novelty makes it notable, its size makes
it significant. The $104-million building, more than
14,000 square metres in area, houses 450 University
of Otago students in two conjoined six-floor blocks,
five minutes’ walk from the main campus. This part
of north Dunedin already had some hefty buildings:
the Gregg’s factory, Forsyth Barr Stadium and the
former dairy factory that, since 1998, has housed the
Hocken Library. Even so, Te Rangihīroa stands out as
a Gulliver in the Lilliput of its immediate, two-storey
neighbourhood. (Urban design was not part of the
brief.) It unequivocally advertises the importance
to Dunedin of the country’s oldest university, an
institution to which a quarter of the city’s population
of 130,000 is in some way connected.
But there’s more to Te Rangihīroa’s significance than
its scale. The building is a statement of – as they might
say at Otago’s still-extant Classics department – the quod
erat demonstrandum variety. It is a realisation of current
thinking about a building type and an expression, also, of
58 Architecture New Zealand
the University of Otago’s unique selling proposition in an
academic system that functions as a competitive market.
Otago’s offering of an intense undergraduate experience
begins with residence close to the campus in one of 15
colleges, as the halls of residence are locally called. All
are owned by or affiliated to the university, and three-
quarters of Otago’s 4000 first-year students live in them.
(Next stop, for the second-years who are up for it: one
of the fabled flats in the student enclave centred on
Castle Street North.)
Te Rangihīroa continues the University of Otago’s
role as both owner and operator of halls of residence.
Otago, has thus far and in spite of its financial
01 North
challenges, remained committed to an accommodation elevation of
model which, because the university takes a long-term Te Rangihīroa,
with the lift
approach to its property holdings, has made business
lobby flanked
as well as social and reputational sense. The case for by the two
control was validated by the investigation following accommodation
wings. The
the death in 2019, undiscovered for several weeks, of building is
a student in a for-profit student hall at the University oriented
of Canterbury: a scandal that prompted the towards the
Taranaki
introduction of a mandatory code of practice for homeland of
tertiary education providers. Sir Peter Buck.
NORTH ELEVATION

WEST ELEVATION

02 The
building’s
rear (south)
elevation, with
the college’s
basketball
court in the
foreground.
Warden
housing is sited
behind the
trees to
02
the right.

Architecture New Zealand 59

 Work

Te Rangihīroa is also a marker in another dimension.

The project, from its inception in 2018 to its
completion early this year, coincided with an evolution
in the university’s understanding of, and approach to,
te ao Māori. In particular, the university has sought a
stronger relationship with the Kāi Tahu rūnanga with
mana whenua status in and around Ōtepoti. On both
sides, this has been a learning process and remains a
work in progress. Gordon Roy, the university’s Strategic
Architect, admits that when he took up his position
six years ago, interaction with Kāi Tahu on Otago’s
development projects was “piecemeal and sporadic”.
Te Rangihīroa was something of a stress test of the
cultural guidelines for such projects, latterly formulated
by the university and Kāi Tahu.
The specific circumstances of the commissioning of
Te Rangihīroa heightened expectations of thorough-
going cultural engagement. The college’s name was
transferred from an existing, smaller hall of residence
on a site threatened by the construction of the new
Dunedin Hospital, now under way. Te Rangihīroa was
a title that couldn’t be lost or slighted. It was the te
reo name of Sir Peter Buck (c.1877–1951), one of the
University of Otago’s most distinguished alumni –
physician, Māori health administrator, MP, decorated
war veteran, anthropologist and long-time director
of the Bishop Museum in Hawai’i. The name was
gifted to the university by Te Rangihīroa’s iwi, Ngāti
Mutunga. The Taranaki- and Chatham Islands-based
iwi has further connections to Ōtepoti; men from
Ngāti Mutunga were among the Parihaka prisoners
transported to the city in the late 1870s, and whānau
bonds to local Kāi Tahu families date from that time.
Gordon Roy says there were “nine or ten”
expressions of interest in the Te Rangihīroa project
from architecture firms. Jasmax “ticked all the boxes”,
Roy says, “in terms of experience, the team they put
03
together and value for money”. From the preliminary
design stage onwards, Jasmax participated in a design-
build process with Christchurch company Southbase
Construction. Essentially, the design divided a big reaching north towards Taranaki and the ancestral
building into two parts: a pair of towers, framed in homeland of Te Rangihīroa.
steel and faced with folded aluminium panels. CLT Simply, the building is organised as a hotel. Other
construction was considered, Roy says, but security universities may be experimenting with different
of supply was deemed problematic. (The technology’s layouts for halls of residence, opting for pod-like
sustainability credentials, he adds, will be harder to hybrids of hostel and flat but, with Te Rangihīroa,
ignore in the future.) The 5 Green Star building is a Otago has stuck with a traditional arrangement of
03 The
kind of H-block, if such a term may be uncoupled stacked floors of individual rooms on both sides of building’s
from its Northern Irish penal associations. The two long corridors. Why? “Because we know it works,” most overt
cultural
towers, aligned roughly north–south, are the stems says Roy: an assertion supported by annual surveys of component
of the ‘H’, joined by the crossbar of the building’s college residents. That being said, he adds, “we have is its façade
connecting lift lobby. On its most welcoming made tweaks”. The challenge for the university and, of aluminium
panels folded
elevation, the building’s stems – its open counters, therefore, its architects was to satisfy programmatic into a kaokao
typographically speaking – are splayed like arms, requirements while providing habitational appeal. pattern.

60 Architecture New Zealand

 04 The
cultural design
carried into
and through
the building is
exemplified by
the tukutuku
patterning on
the ceiling of
the ground-
floor entrance
lobby and
circulation
04
areas.

Architecture New Zealand 61

 Work
Economics dictated that the building had to be big to
maximise the advantage of its well-positioned site and
meet accommodation demand. Socially, the building
had to operate in an inclusive manner. Design had
a crucial role to play in bridging the gap between
what Roy calls the “social sweet spot” of a hall of
residence, 300 students, and the actual population of
Te Rangihīroa, which is 50 per cent greater.
The reconciliation of the economically feasible
and the socially desirable was achieved through the
quality of individual spaces, and the amenity and,
importantly, the distribution of common areas.
Exterior views through operable windows, built-in
furniture and broadloom carpet are standard to all
student rooms, whether they are the 11-square-metre
regular rooms or the 16-square-metre rooms with en
suites. (The annual fee for a standard room is around
$19,000; for another $2000, a student can have one
of the 150 ensuites, a relatively high marginal return
on investment, students, and parents, might think.)
The bedrooms, which are accessed off 1.8-metre-
05
62 Architecture New Zealand
wide corridors, are effectively individual fire cells,
connected to an automatic door closer. Common
areas include the ground floor whare kai or dining
hall, the building’s hub, which is served by a kitchen
that prepares three meals a day, and the constantly
staffed reception, along with numerous tutorial,
meeting and social spaces on the same level. The siting
of two whānau rooms on each of the five, 90-room
accommodation levels – one to each wing – is a key
element of a strategy to combat the alienating effect
of life in a large college in a new city. Care has been
taken to provide islands of calm in the sea of bustle.
Jasmax project architect Matthew Downs talks about
05 The
neurodivergent spaces with a matter-of-factness that
ground-floor
would have been inconceivable a few years ago. whare kai
The Te Rangihīroa project negotiated a few obstacles can seat 300
diners at one
along the way. One was unexceptional: the value- time and
managed substitution of a penthouse level of warden accommodate
accommodation by several adjacent, street-level all of the
college’s 450
cottages, designed by another architecture practice. students at
(Roy says the financially motivated change, which special events.
reduced the structural load on the slim towers
and saved façade costs, had the coincident benefit
of giving wardens some separation from their
workplace.) Two speed bumps came by surprise: the
Covid-19 pandemic, which, at its height, incapacitated
half of the construction workforce and delayed
completion by at least half a year, and the failure, near
the project’s end, of the original façade manufacturer.
There was another issue that had to be worked
through. Both Ngāti Mutunga and Kāi Tahu had
reservations about the project’s initial cultural
direction. A robust meeting at Ōtākou marae was
important in achieving a “re-set”, says Megan Pōtiki,
a prominent member of the local rūnanga, who
credits Roy for his willingness to engage with
stakeholder iwi and his recognition of Ngāti
Mutunga’s right “to drive the narrative”. For his part,
Mitchell Ritai, Chief Executive of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti
Mutunga, says the episode confirmed his belief that,
in development projects, “it’s always easiest to have
cultural discussions early on”. In the end, says
Pōtiki, a “re-set” agreed “with graciousness” was
“good for all of us”.
Te Rangihīroa’s many cultural components are most
strongly evident in the kaokao pattern – the tukutuku
06
chevron, representing the side of the ribs, that signals
protection – on the building’s aluminium façade
panels, and the tukutuku frit on the exterior glazing.
The ‘ribs’ represent the qualities that provide the life
support for a student’s university career: manawa
roa (resilience); manawa tina (resoluteness); manawa
nui (courage); and manawa toka (determination).
The college’s typographic identity is set in a typeface
Jasmax derived from Sir Peter Buck’s backward-
sloping, left-handed cursive writing. Interior cultural
elements include the colour coding that references
the hues of the Taranaki land- and skyscape in
distinguishing the accommodation floors. (The deep
green of whenua/land on Level 1, for example, and the 06 One of
light blue of rangi/sky on Level 5.) Te Rangihīroa’s
300 standard
The product of ambition, ability, generosity and 07 rooms. There
considerable mutual forbearance, Te Rangihīroa is, says are also 150
Pōtiki, “the only building in Dunedin or Otago with a rooms with
en suite
complex cultural narrative”. (Of a Māori nature, that is: bathrooms.
the city and the region are not short of buildings that
07 The
tell settler stories.) While the building’s design has a ground-floor
particular cultural character, the college, as all partners music room,
one of many
in the project emphasise, embraces students of all
social spaces
backgrounds. It does that, says Roy, while “sending a available to
signal to Dunedin, and New Zealand, about where the the college’s
residents.
university is heading”. And where it has come from:
impressively, the college expresses the University of 08 One of the
social spaces
Otago’s commitment to its traditions and, reassuringly, on the college’s
08
to the welfare of its students. ground floor.

Architecture New Zealand 63

Work

Project
Information 9
10

7
6

12
8

LOCATION Forth Street, Dunedin 12 11 5

SITE AREA 8800m2 4

1
FLOOR AREA 14,500m2 2

STOREYS Six
3

TIME SCHEDULE 9 6

Design, documentation: 20 months 9

9 9 13
14
Construction: 30 months 13 15 12 11
12
11
CLIENT University of Otago
ARCHITECT Jasmax

N
PROJECT TEAM Matthew Downs, TYPICAL UPPER-FLOOR PLAN
Chris Scott, Chris Boss, Rohan 1 LIFT LOBBY 5 CORRIDOR 9 STANDARD DORM ROOMS 13 CLEANERS
2 LIFTS 6 WHĀNAU ROOM 10 ACC BATHROOM 14 RISER
Packard, James Pearse, Liz Savage, 3 COMMS 7 EN SUITE ROOMS 11 BATHROOMS 15 RESIDENTIAL
4 STORE 8 EN SUITE ROOM WING 12 STAIR ASSISTANT ROOM
James Holth, Arnika Blount, Nikki
Senekal, Adrian Taylor, Mark Sayegh,
Kimmy Deng, Gier Jong, Kate Larkin,
Jurgen Eisenhauer, Clem Devine,
Aaron Troy, Jarrad Caine
CULTURAL ADVISORS Ngāti
Mutunga, Kāi Tahu, Aukaha, Haumi
BUILDER Southbase Construction 1
23
20
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER 16 13 11 2
14 22
Lewis Bradford 18 17 6 21
10 19
7
HYDRAULIC, MECHANICAL 15 19 9 8
1
AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEER
3
Powell Fenwick 42
4
24
LANDSCAPING, INTERIORS, 43 8
5

39 25
BRAND AND GRAPHIC 12

DESIGN Jasmax
27
37 35 35 33 34
28 26
39
KITCHEN DESIGN 29
39 38 40 36 30 31 32
19
Southern Hospitality
FIRE, ACOUSTICS AND
41
LIGHTING CONSULTANT
Powell Fenwick
PROJECT MANAGER RCP
CULTURAL ARTIST
Fayne Robinson
ROOFING RoofLogic
ACOUSTIC PANELS STAFF
T HOUSES SITE

Décortech, Asona, Autex

INSULATION
Kingspan, Autex, Pink Batts
FLOORING Forbo, Interface, Feltex
CLADDING PRODUCTS
N

James Hardie, Sika, Thermakraft GROUND-FLOOR PLAN

DRAINAGE Allproof 1 WIND LOBBY 9 MEETING 17 MULTIMEDIA ROOM 25 LINEN 32 SERVERY 39 PLANT
2 10 18 26 33 DINING 40 LOADING
SURFACE TREATMENTS 3
LOBBY
LIFT LOBBY 11
SOCIAL LOUNGE
SOCIAL SEATING 19
SPORTS STORE
STAIR 27
KITCHEN
EQUIPMENT STORE 34 EXTERNAL DOCK
Plytech, Laminex 4 LIFT 12 CORRIDOR 20 STUDY LOUNGE 28 KITCHEN OFFICE SEATING 41 REFUSE
5 COMMS 13 TABLE TENNIS 21 BATHROOMS 29 CLEANERS 35 COOLROOM 42 STAFF
POWDERCOATING 6 RECEPTION 14 POOL TABLES 22 TUTORIAL ROOM 30 MSB 36 DRY STORE LAUNDRY
7 OFFICE 15 MEDIA ROOM 23 TUTORIAL SPACE 31 DISHWASHER 37 FREEZER 43 STAFF
Dulux Duratec 8 LEADERS’ ROOM 16 MUSIC ROOM 24 LAUNDRY ROOM 38 STORE FACILITIES

64 Architecture New Zealand

www.rooflogic.co.nz
 Work

Home
on the
lease
Jeremy Smith
investigates
William Samuels
Architects’ artfully
constructed take on
affordable housing.
Photography
SIMON DEVITT

RIGHT
Parked in parallel,
the wagons open
via a covered deck.

66 Architecture New Zealand

 Work
HOUSE-BUILDING ISN’T NEW, YET SOMEHOW
there still seems a whole lot to trailblaze. Before you
even queue for a builder, or eye up an estimate, there’s
the start-up cost of land. For, while sites have been
suburbanising into parcels, land values have somehow
gone the other way and followed the steep cost inclines
of building. It’s all gone exponential. Folk tempted to
steer down the freedom trail to bespoke home-building
might well turn off to tackle apartment appointments
rather than navigate those windier questions of form or
siting. It’s hardly the pioneering spirit but counting up
those land costs can very quickly descend Home on the
Range dreams to Home out of Range.
So why does building invariably start with purchasing
dirt? Land ownership is a construct. It’s a line where
not everyone wins no matter which prairie you cross.
Finger plucking “Oh! Give me a home where the buffalo
roam” might still, if lucky, extend to “Where the deer
and the antelope play” but it all gets a little real at
“Where seldom is heard a discouraging word”.1 The
tuning hasn’t yet simplified to “let us build on the land
without owning it, please”. But why not? The idea of
leasing rather than owning land might well have led to
housing models with far less corralling. Those looking
01
68 Architecture New Zealand
for somewhere to build today battle land entitlements
of a far less vital kind when compared to those still
playing out in our Treaty Partner discussions. Yet,
with bank mortgagers continuing to gather surety in
the ground under our feet, the axles to home-building
don’t roll easily. So, as we all work to rein in histories
out there on the range and, ironically, face ongoing
struggles in finding places for us all to live, building
without land ownership might just re-open a housing
frontier: Home on the Lease.
There’s a couple of little wagons resting in a paddock
that test out this scenario. Fittingly, they are in Whakatū
Nelson for, as the next line of the song goes, “And the sky
is not clouded all day”. The blue-sky thinking seems to
be caravanning outwards for there are some suburban-
looking dwellings to the left, tiny housing to the right,
parents behind and somewhere else a sister. Now, who
owns or is leasing what is not quite clear but perhaps
that is the point. It looks like any normal collection of 01 Planting
semi-rural houses with planting and fencing separating conceals
neighbours and
individual allotments. Architect William Samuels of
boundaries.
William Samuels Architects, who, along with his partner
02 The wagons
Hannah D’Arcy, built, owns and lives in the wagons, join to form a
describes the leasing arrangements as having “a different deeper space.
 02

AXONOMETRIC AXONOMETRIC TRANSPORTATION – FUTURE UNCOUPLING

Architecture New Zealand 69

 Work
03
metric to affordability”, for they distribute value rather
than economics.
This ‘value proposition’ means we aren’t talking
conventional cross-leasing where two separate house
owners share section rights. This is more one-sided
and chattel-less. They simply lease the right to use
some land for a period of time and, when time’s up,
leave with their building. There is nothing perpetual
here; it’s short rather than long-term security. But,
this is not a new idea; farmers rent grazing, architects
tenant office space and significant parts of our
communities continue to live on leaseholds around
Aotearoa, including in Whakatū Nelson. So, why not?
Just about everything is time-rented these days: cars,
holiday houses, even pandas.
What is interesting with these wagons, though, is
70 Architecture New Zealand
that the requirements for living on borrowed time
come with surprisingly few relocatable specifications.
There’s no large ute towing SGA-esque My Whare
housing around,2 not even a horse. Neither are the
buildings trailer-park trimmed down to be worth
nothing when they’ve run their course.3 These wagons
are geared to park for the length of the lease and
then be moved and used somewhere else. Samuels’
thinking is almost old fashioned in its simplicity and
balances out to a small, one-off, high-quality house.
Qualities, of course, aided by architectural keenness
and know-how, one and a half years to labour the
build, and parents with some spare paddock: all good 03 Timber
proposition values to shift away from an unaffordable linings
curve to the
house-with-land ownership model. That the wagons frameless
are so beautiful and built for around $150K certainly openings.
narrates some terrific pioneering. Equally, this alerts
us all to how little we’ve done to keep the road open
for affordable bespoke house-building.
Samuels, who, with D’Arcy, moved back to Nelson
from Melbourne via a stint in Germany, explains that
the leasing precedents came from Europe, where
value doesn’t home straight to the physical but to the
qualities and experience of the way in which you live.
It’s a discussion that has found a voice with Studio
House, as they call their home, being duly awarded
a 2023 Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute
of Architects National Award in the category of Small
Project Architecture. Small, yes, but this is not a tiny
home crammed full of everything, everywhere, all at
once. This is a house, designed and parked to feel free
and simple.
Some of that lies in coupling the 2.5 x 8.0m
zincalume-clad wagons to overlap in parallel and
make a broader space. It’s the kind of make-depth-
and-corner planning you see in container housing.
The approach bookends space between kitchen and
bathroom, deepening from entry pergola to a rear
couch before shelving a bed behind some books. At
42m2, not everything can make the journey: notably
a liking for books, which must wait to travel west to
the frontier or, in this case, east from Australia. So,
an opening is prepared for a future parallel extension
to expand bed to bedrooms and shelf to library. Such
planning is important in the adventures of life but
there are no lined-out openings on show here, not
even an architrave. Detailing takes detail and here is
an architect both committed to the endeavour and
well schooled.
Samuels clearly packs some freedoms, in part at
least, from his time working for Kerstin Thompson.
There’s an understanding of how-to-make on show,

04 The bed
shelters behind
books.

05

REFERENCES
1
John A Lomax,
Cowboy Songs and
Other Frontier
Ballads. New York:
The Macmillan
Company, 1922.
pdf. loc.gov/
item/23026571.
Full lyrics from Dr
Brewster Higley’s
My Western Home
poem put to music
by Daniel E Kelley.
songofamerica.net/
song/home-on-the-
range. Accessed
3 December 2023.
2
Jeremy Smith,
‘With a little help
from my friends’.
Architecture NZ,
Jan/Feb 2022,
pp. 68–74.
3
Sonya Salamon
and Katherine
MacTavish,
Singlewide:
Chasing the
American Dream
in a Rural Trailer
Park. New York:
Cornell University
04 Press, 2017,
pp. 20–21.

Architecture New Zealand 71

 Work
05
which comes with the design-heavy detailing of the
Melbourne architectural scene. Our chat runs to his
other heroes, Clare Cousins and Mel Bright, and the
hidden angling of steel in the hooped portals to remove
the jamb to those up-high wagon windows. These
jambs lie beneath what must have felt like an alarmingly
thin, 9mm tongue-and-groove lining thickness
that allows the boards to radius without noticeable
chamfering. The detail needed to parallel park these
wagons goes on. Outside, broad planking skirts past a
down-low, inside-out gutter. Most critical, perhaps, is
the cupboard-depth demountable layer that eventually
allows the wagons to unharness. It provides the only
evidence of any potential mobility with its screw-
headed linings and, if you look hard enough, removable
internal gutter. Yet, it is what is behind the covers that
72 Architecture New Zealand
05 A loft over
a workspace
and bathroom.
suggests others might take up this leasing trail.
For, behind the shape, edge detailing and rented
realities, each wagon is grounded with standard
pile foundations. Their future removal requires no
more than the usual conventions of M12 bolts and
DPC bearer clearances. House-movers will surely
think nothing of collecting these wagons after years
of cutting up and carting villas. There’s no ticking
time bomb here, no corralling complexity: just happy
architecture with an hourglass agreement. The frontier
“That I would not exchange my home here to range,
Forever in azures so bright” has been rewritten in this
homing in on the range. William Samuels Architects’
wagons suggest affordable bespoke housing might yet
gain a new lease on life. Keep that horse saddled, stay
ready for the trail, blue skies or grey.
EAST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

2 3

SECTION CONCEPT SKETCH

1 LIVING 2 KITCHEN 3 DECK

Architecture New Zealand 73

Work

9
1
4

7 8

LOFT
2

Project
Information
LOCATION
N
Todds Valley, Nelson
FLOOR PLAN
SITE AREA 2.7ha
1 KITCHEN 3 BEDROOM 5 BATHROOM 7 LAUNDRY 9 LOFT (OVER
2 LIVING 4 WORKSPACE 6 DECK 8 ROBE BATHROOM) FLOOR AREA 42m2
STOREYS Two
TIME SCHEDULE
Design, documentation: Six months
Construction: 18 months
CLIENT William Samuels
and Hannah D’Arcy
ARCHITECT
William Samuels Architects
PROJECT TEAM
William Samuels, Hannah D’Arcy
BUILDER Owner-builder
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Gary Hodder
ROOFING AND EXTERNAL
WALLS Colorsteel, Zincalume
INTERNAL WALLS
Autex, Valchromat
WINDOWS APL
FLOORING Flooring Xtra, Jacobsen
LIGHTING Lightingplus
TAPWARE ABI Interiors
CEILING FANS Lightingplus
EXTERNAL ELEMENTS
PLAN DIAGRAM – AN OPENING IS PREPARED FOR A PARALLEL EXTENSION TO EXPAND
Perry Grating

74 Architecture New Zealand

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 Work

Masters of
manipulation
Amanda Harkness
takes a tour of
Precinct Properties’
revitalised head
office, by Warren and
Mahoney, and finds a
series of dramatically
different elevations.
Photography
BARRY TOBIN

RIGHT Up to
50 per cent of the
recently renovated
head office’s floor
plate offers
non-traditional
workplace settings.

76 Architecture New Zealand

Architecture New Zealand 77
 Work

THE FIRST TIME I VISITED PRECINCT

Properties on the 12th floor of the HSBC building
was about four years ago, ahead of a scheduled walk-
around of the new Commercial Bay building the day
before its official opening.
A throng of media jostled through an unassuming
space and headed for an oversized storage room to
gather equally oversized steel-toecap boots, fluoro vests
and hard hats. We were then herded towards a nearby
air bridge and I had barely registered my surroundings.
My most recent visit, along with interior project
lead Dan Kempka of Warren and Mahoney, couldn’t
have been more different: quite literally, like night
and day. Stepping out of the lift into the lobby of the
country’s largest developer and property manager,
you’re greeted with the unexpected juxtaposition of
luxurious bronze carpet and raw concrete-block wall.
The lining of this foyer has been stripped back to the
core structure so the frames around the lift openings
appear to protrude like metallic blades, softened by
draped fabric on either side. Opposite, a faceted-
mirror wall intentionally distorts your perception
of space and, above, the ceiling, too, is mirrored:
certainly not your typical workplace arrival.
I’m not sure if it’s intentional but it is almost impossible
not to pause at this juncture, as if to enter a new state.
From the relative darkness of this unconventional entry
follows a transition towards the light of the north-facing
elevation, where an entirely different experience unfolds.
01
Here, the Waitematā Harbour forms an impressive
backdrop to both the reception and communal ‘live
lounge’ and bar areas. The soft carpet underfoot gives
way to a meticulously laid and aligned terracotta tile
floor, designed to reference the Quay Street pavers of
old. “We’re bringing that local connection right up to
this floor,” explains Kempka, “because it’s been part of
this landscape for a long time.”
The tiles stretch the length of the space, 68,000 of
them, individually laid by hand. They run below the
floating log-shaped reception desk and up and around
the elevated central island; they form planter boxes and
a gently sloping path. Importantly, they introduce the
concept of grid. “We see Precinct as the ‘protagonist’
in the development and building space,” says Kempka,
“so, we wanted to reinforce that architectural language
and the concept of constant change in their workplace.”
Hence, the [city] grid becomes key throughout, strict
and geometric, playing out in every facet of the fit-out.
02
Reminiscent of ceramicist Ben Pyne’s outer
courtyard installation at Objectspace (but on steroids),
01 Arrival at 02 Faceted wall the terracotta conjures a relaxed mood, combined
the lobby is an mirrors provide a with plenty of greenery, leather booth seating and
unexpected gentle distortion
mix of luxury as visitors enter
timber cabinetry. This front-and-centre space is
and utility. the space. about encouraging connection and collaboration, says

78 Architecture New Zealand

 03

03 The single-
level floor plate
offers city-wide
views against
the harbour, as
the backdrop to
the reception
and communal
‘live lounge’
and bar. Here,
the reception
counter
resembles a
fallen tree.

04 A sunken
lounge area
offers a
comfortable,
relaxed mood.

05 Scale,
textures and
tone are
deliberately
designed to
reflect the
client’s portfolio
04 05
of projects.

Architecture New Zealand 79

 Work

Kempka. He alludes to city building again by pointing

out the ‘building blocks’ and ‘little pockets’ created
within this zone.
The space can comfortably accommodate the 90
or so employees within Precinct’s Auckland office if
everyone is needed in one spot; that includes members
of the Generator team, specialists in the co-working
domain. Exposed ceilings in this area reveal some of
the original beams and offer additional height as we
move up the sloping floor.
What’s significant here is that close to 50 per cent of
Precinct’s floor plate is given over to non-traditional
workplace settings. Meeting rooms are positioned
against the northern and western core, with levels
of privacy discreetly maintained by a combination
of brass mesh and heavy drapery; the latter, on close
inspection, even sports a grid pattern through the
looseness of its weave. This layering creates a degree of
curiosity, revealing a sense of activity and movement
but leaving the rest to the imagination.
As the tiled walkway comes to an end, a change in the
material language signals a new experience, designated
the ‘workshop’ zone. Screens are subtly swapped out
to mirror the façades of projects within the Precinct
portfolio, such as that on the N. Cole Pavilion next
to 10 Madden. The flooring and wallpaper, in
turn, reference the L36 workplace suite offering in
Commercial Bay. “The idea is that, if you’re familiar
with Precinct and their work, when you come into their
06
office, you’ll be able to pick up certain hints of their
projects around Auckland,” explains Kempka.
We have now entered the company’s showcase space,
where past and future developments are set upon
plinths like floating islands and a large screen offers the
opportunity to present reels of renders. Conveniently,
the west-facing windows look down onto the car park
that will become the site of perhaps Precinct’s most
ambitious project to date, overshadowing even the hugely
substantial Commercial Bay. Downtown, a proposed
design collaboration between Warren and Mahoney
and Snøhetta, while still several years off commencing
construction, will be made up of two towers above
a central podium, providing office, residential and
hospitality as well as new urban spaces for both residents
and the public. “Precinct’s place-making projects shape
and transform the city,” Kempka points out, “and we’ve
sought to reflect that vision and purpose creatively 06 An elevated
through this series of diverse and responsive workspaces.” central hub
presides over
Transitioning into the workshop zone, it’s evident that the ‘live lounge’.
employee well-being is a priority, not only through the 07 The galley
choice and variety of workspace on offer but also with the kitchen sits
discreet positioning of a wellness room for quiet retreat between the
workspace and
or parenting needs, or if you’re just not feeling too well. the lounge and
07
Personality and warmth are introduced through a wall bar area.

80 Architecture New Zealand

 08 09

of cashmere-coloured cabinetry, and ‘neighbourhood’-

based workstations are placed on an unexpected angle in
response to the angular shape of the building.
Around the corner, ‘sumptuous plum’ cabinetry runs
along a second interior wall leading to the kitchen and 08 Employees
lounge area, having come full circle or, in this case, full are offered
choice and
triangle back to the central hub. The planting here is variety in the
almost like the undergrowth you might find in the cracks way in which
they work and
of a city, rather than species from the forest or bush. The
meet in the
project is on track to receive a 5 Green Star rating, which workspace.
is as high as can be achieved within the 22-year-old 09 Lush dark-
188 Quay Street building, and Kempka says the team at bronze carpet
Precinct seems very happy in their new environment. and reflective
gold steel form
What Warren and Mahoney has created here, in a labyrinth of
collaboration with Black Interiors, is an ambitious, darkness and
experiential workplace, with a focus on hosting and texture in the
‘host’ space.
networking at its core. The architects describe it
10 The
as “a transformational space for a transformational company’s
business” and they have been masterful in their showcase
manipulation of what was previously a largely area has an
oversized
unremarkable environment. Even the site visit steel- screen for
10
toecap boots look better behind sumptuous plum. presentations.

Architecture New Zealand 81

Work

Project 5 5

Information
2 3
7
5

LOCATION 5 5
16 4
188 Quay Street, Auckland 6

FLOOR AREA 1350m2 8

9

STOREYS One 17
TIME SCHEDULE 5
1
Design: Nine months 15
9
Construction: Six months 5

CLIENT Precinct Properties NZ

ARCHITECT
Warren and Mahoney Architects 14 19 18
10
PROJECT TEAM
5
Scott Compton, Daniel Kempka,
Bella McMahon, Kelsey Muir
BUILDER 11

Black Interiors + Construction 13

CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS 12

9
David Devery, Michael Chitham
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Holmes Structures 13

HYDRAULIC, ELECTRICAL
AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER
NDY
LANDSCAPE GreenAir
INTERIORS N

Warren and Mahoney Architects LEVEL 12 FLOOR PLAN

LIGHTING Energylight, NDY 1 LOBBY 5 MEETING ROOM 9 COLLAB AREA 13 WORKSPACE 17 FEMALE BATHROOM
2 RECEPTION 6 FOH STORE 10 UTILITY ROOM 14 WELLNESS ROOM 18 MALE BATHROOM
QUANTITY SURVEYOR RLB 3 LIVE LOUNGE 7 HUB 11 QUIET ROOM 15 PROJECT SPACE 19 ACC BATHROOM
4 KITCHEN 8 STORE 12 COMMS ROOM 16 WORKSHOP
FIRE CONSULTANT Crossfire
ACOUSTICS NDY
PROJECT MANAGEMENT RCP
WINDOWS Haynes Glass,
Perry Grating NZ, Dulux Powders,
3M/Big Ideas Group,
Metro Performance Glass
DOORS NZ Panels, ARA
Hardware, Lotus Doors, Best Doors
INTERNAL WALLS Autex,
Viridian Glass, Steel & Tube, Resene,
TAL Tiling, Kube Contract
FLOORING Signature Floors,
Interface, Forbo, Artedomus NZ,
Tile Warehouse, VidaSpace
INTERIOR PRODUCTS Laminex,
Cosentino, Hardwood Timbers,
Lapco, James Dunlop Textiles, Potter
Interior Systems, The Tile People,
Luxaflex, Kvadrat
FURNITURE Fletcher Design,
ISOMETRIC PLAN VIEW
Harrows, Blink, Morrow Furniture

82 Architecture New Zealand

Crit / Itinerary
ITINERARY_
Heritage
conservation
stories of
our era
Words: Julia Gatley
Sometimes, it seems that demolitions
have a more vivid place in people’s
memories than do heritage
conservation success stories. Everyone
remembers Aniwaniwa.
Today, government policy and
legislation are providing huge
challenges for heritage. The
National Policy Statement on Urban
Development 2020 encourages urban
intensification, with little regard for
heritage value, and the Resource
Management (Enabling Housing Supply
and Other Matters) Amendment Act
2021 supports its implementation.
In addition, seismic strengthening
deadlines introduced with amendments
to the Building Act in 2016 are almost
upon us. The first of these is 1 July
2027, as territorial authorities in
high-risk seismic areas were to have
identified potentially earthquake-
prone buildings in “priority”
categories (according to building
type, construction technology, use
and location) by 1 January 2020,
with owners then having 7.5 years to
undertake the remediation work. The
required work is expensive for most
owners, prohibitively so for many, and
there is little public funding for it.
Without remediation, a building, or a
Tapawera
01 06 07 13
11
10 12
14
part of a building, effectively becomes
‘red stickered’. Buildings in smaller
towns where rental incomes are lower
are particularly at risk.
The bigger picture, however, is that
climate change is also upon us and, as
American architect Carl Elefante wrote
in 2007, “The greenest building… is
the one that is already built”. Retention
of existing buildings makes best
use of their embodied energy and
is consistent with the reduce/reuse/
recycle ethos. Retention of heritage
buildings is further important because
they are valued by communities and
individuals; they contribute to place,
memory and people’s sense of identity.
New Zealanders have been working
to save important buildings from
demolition since the beginning of
the 20th century. The architects who
worked on early conservation projects
did so intuitively rather than with
specialist knowledge. The Historic
Places Act 1954 established the national
heritage agency. Among other things, it
built up a property portfolio. The initial
work on buildings owned by the New
Zealand Historic Places Trust (now
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga)
was led by Ministry of Works architect
John Stacpoole, joined over time by
08
09
02
03 04 05
others, including Chris Cochran from
the mid-1970s.
Our architectural conservation sector
really matured in the 1980s. The Historic
Places Act 1980 formalised the buildings
classification system now known as
listing. Jeremy Salmond and Chris
Cochran established the country’s first
private practices specialising in heritage
work, in Auckland and Wellington
respectively, that decade. Ian Bowman
was the first New Zealander to complete
a master’s degree in architectural
conservation, doing so at the University
of York in 1986. Central government
sponsored five Māori conservators to
complete conservation degrees at the
University of Canberra between 1986
and 1991. And ICOMOS Aotearoa New
Zealand, the New Zealand arm of the
International Council on Monuments
and Sites, was formed in 1987.
The 1990s and beyond have
seen further legislative change,
the publication of key guidance
documents, including two editions of
the ICOMOS New Zealand Charter for
the Conservation of Places of Cultural
Heritage Value (1993 and 2010), and
the expansion of the sector more
generally, including a greater number
of practices specialising in heritage
Supported by
01
1986–1989
Old Synagogue (1884–1885)
19A Princes Street, Auckland
Salmond Architect with Marshall Cook
Jeremy Salmond was the first heritage
architect to earn an NZIA Gold Medal,
doing so in 2018. His adaptive re-use
of Auckland’s old Synagogue to serve
as a branch of the National Bank was
significant in the development of his
career in heritage because it moved
him beyond residential work and
into conservation in the public and
commercial realms. The new use was
ideal because it allowed the big space
in the middle of the building to remain
intact. The project earned an NZIA
National Award for conservation in
1990. The building is now occupied by
the University of Auckland. See John
Walsh (ed.), Jeremy Salmond (2018).
work. Several of the country’s large
practices now employ at least one
conservation architect.
Good heritage outcomes require
research to understand the original
building and a commitment to
undertaking as little change as is
possible but as much as is necessary
to achieve the desired end result.
Incorporating change – a new use,
new services, seismic strengthening,
retrofitting for improved environmental
performance and/or universal access –
without compromising heritage value is
not easy. The fine-grained decisions are
often subjective and debatable rather
than prescriptive or predetermined.
This itinerary presents a range
of projects that are remarkable in
different ways. There are, of course,
many more.
In the previous issue’s ‘City Guide:
Taupō’ Itinerary, the Taupō Superloo
(listing #11) was incorrectly attributed
to architect Antanas Procuta of Paua
Architects. The architects for this 1993
project were Sandy Geddes & Associates
with Jenkins, Roberts & Associates.
Architecture New Zealand 85
Crit / Itinerary
02
1993
Tongariro National Park
Central North Island
Tribal land of Ngāti Tūwharetoa
Tongariro National Park, with its
spectacular maunga and volcanic
plateau, holds a ‘world first’ within
heritage conservation practice; in 1993,
it was the first place to be inscribed on
UNESCO’s World Heritage (WH) List
as an associative cultural landscape. It
had been inscribed three years earlier
for its natural values but protagonists
lobbied for greater attention to be given
to Indigenous understandings of place.
In this case, tangata whenua see the
maunga and other geographic features
as spiritual/cultural beings. The WH
listing criteria were rewritten and, thus,
the national park could be inscribed for
its cultural values as well.
06
2004 on
Britomart Precinct (1885 on)
Customs, Quay and Queen Streets,
and Britomart Place, Auckland
Various, including Salmond Reed
Architects and Cheshire Architects
Comprising nine city blocks and
developed by Cooper and Company,
Britomart is New Zealand’s largest
urban regeneration project with a
heritage focus. It could easily have been
very different. Proposals from the 1980s
and ’90s showed much demolition and
new high-rises. Then the Auckland
City Council had a change of heart
and commissioned Salmond Reed to
prepare conservation plans for
18 heritage buildings. New buildings
have been developed around the
carefully revitalised old. It is a project
to be celebrated. See Joy Park’s PhD
(University of Auckland, 2022) and the
Britomart website (britomart.org).
86 Architecture New Zealand
03
1992–1995
Parliament House (1911–1922)
and Parliamentary Library
(1897–1899)
1 Molesworth Street, Wellington
Warren and Mahoney with Howard Tanner
Seismicity is a major issue for our
country, and the base isolation of
buildings to help them withstand
earthquakes is understood to have been
invented here – by engineer Dr Bill
Robinson in Wellington in the 1970s.
The retrofit base isolation of Parliament
House and the Parliamentary Library
in the 1990s was notable because
Parliament House, in particular, has
a large footprint and positioning the
rubber, steel and lead isolators under
the existing building was a major feat.
Apparently, there are 417 of them
and they were designed to move up
to 300mm in any direction during an
earthquake. Holmes Consulting Group
did the engineering.
07
2003–2009
The Pah (1877–1879)
72 Hillsborough Road, Auckland
Matthews & Matthews Architects
The Pah is a large 19th-century house
that had had institutional use before it
was purchased by the Auckland City
Council in 2002 for re-use as an art
gallery. In the new Stubbs volume (see
‘Sources’), Robin Byron praises the
skill with which Matthews & Matthews
fitted multiple new services into the
old building, including strengthening,
air conditioning, security and a fire
protection system, largely tucked in
behind old oak dados, parquet flooring
and plastered ceilings. Retractable walls
increased flexibility and the garden
was returned to an earlier design. The
project earned an NZIA Local Award
in 2010.
04
1994–1996
Old Government Buildings
(1875–1876)
55 Lambton Quay, Wellington
Department of Conservation
and Ian Bowman
This project exemplifies the dilemmas
faced in conservation practice. Should
replica chimney pots have been
introduced, given that the originals
were removed years earlier and the
new ones were not functional? Should
steel have been used to strengthen
timber staircases in a building whose
main claim to fame is that it is one
of the largest timber buildings in the
world? These are questions David
Kernohan asked of students when
teaching heritage conservation at the
Wellington School of Architecture in
the 1990s. There were no right answers,
just evolving points of view and the
potential for students to make a
good argument.
08
2011
Mataatua Wharenui (1872–1875)
105 Muriwai Drive, Whakatāne
Te Hau o Rangi Tutua (master carver)
The large Ngāti Awa wharenui
Mataatua is widely travelled. It was
taken by central government in 1879
and shown at international exhibitions
in Sydney, Melbourne and London
before returning in 1925 – not to
Whakatāne but to Dunedin for the New
Zealand and South Seas Exhibition
– and was then lodged in the Otago
Museum. Ngāti Awa had pressed for
its return for years. This was finally
confirmed through the Waitangi
settlement process in 1996, and realised
in 2011. The return home is inspiring.
See Hirini Mead et al., Mataatua
Wharenui (2017). In 2023, Mataatua
was listed as a wahi tupuna/tipuna.
05
2003 on
Futuna Chapel (1958–1961)
67 Futuna Close, Karori, Wellington
Various, including Chris Cochran,
Nick Bevin, Peter Parkes and Lianne Cox
How far would you go to save your
favourite building from demolition?
A group in Wellington went admirably
far to save John Scott’s most celebrated
work; they bought it. Futuna Chapel
came close to demolition from 2000
when the retreat centre of which it was
part was sold to developers wanting
to replace the buildings with housing.
Locals campaigned for the retention
of the chapel and, ultimately, formed
the Friends of Futuna Charitable Trust
to buy it in 2003. Since then, they
have undertaken conservation work
incrementally. See Nick Bevin and
Gregory O’Brien, Futuna: Life of a
Building (2016).
09
2000–2015
Toko Toru Tapu Church (1913)
73 Whakato Road, Manutuke
Architects 44
The conservation of this significant
Māori church has been described as “a
labour of love” for Architects 44’s James
Blackburne, who led the project across
a 16-year period. A Gothic Revival
exterior opens to a Māori interior,
with whakairo (carved panels) on the
walls. Discreet strengthening, devised
by Spencer Holmes, was achieved
with fibreglass bars, made locally in
Gisborne, inserted behind the restored
whakairo. The project included
repainting, based on paint scrapes to
determine original colours, re-roofing
using diamond-shaped pressed metal
tiles, and the reinstatement of the bell
tower. It earned an NZIA National
Award in 2016.

10
2015–present
The Arts Centre (1877–1923)
2 Worcester Boulevard, Christchurch
Warren and Mahoney and
DPA Architects
The Arts Centre, formed in the 1950s,
has long occupied the buildings built
for Canterbury University College and
neighbouring secondary schools. Most
of them suffered extensive damage
in the Canterbury earthquakes of
2010–2011. In a city once known for
its Gothic Revival masonry heritage,
each survivor is now valued even more
than it was previously. By 2022, two-
thirds of The Arts Centre complex
had been strengthened, repaired and
reopened. Individual projects have
earned multiple awards, among them
the Great Hall and Clock Tower, which
earned a Merit in the UNESCO Asia-
Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage
Conservation in 2017.
13
Photography: Andrew Barrie, Julia Gatley, Phillip Hartley, Anthony Hōete, David Rotherham and Robin Skinner.
2016–2020
Whare Koa Māngere Community
Centre (1920s)
141 Robertson Road, Māngere, Auckland
Burgess Treep & Knight Architects
Conservation projects come in all
shapes, sizes and budgets. Whare Koa
is an Auckland Council community
house for Māori and Pacific groups.
It looks like a bungalow and the
name translates as ‘Happy House’.
The exterior colour was restored
first, sponsored by PPG Industries
New Zealand in 2016, followed by
interior refurbishment, where colour
is to the fore – including pink, orange
and yellow – ensuring much bang
for buck. The project shows that
architects can have fun with heritage,
particularly when the design strategies
support community aspirations. This
one earned NZIA Local Awards for
Heritage and Colour in 2021.
Tapawera
11
2014–2018
Nelson School of Music
(1895–1901)
48 Nile Street, Nelson
Irving Smith Architects and Ian Bowman
Inside this brick building is a beautiful
auditorium with a barrel-vaulted
ceiling and internationally renowned
acoustics. Also earning international
acclaim was the strengthening,
repair and restoration project, with
a Distinction at the UNESCO Asia-
Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage
Conservation and selection as a finalist
in the World Architecture Festival
(small architecture category), along
with an NZIA Local Award, all in 2019.
Signalling change is the new entry
and foyer between the old buildings,
recessed and clearly contemporary with
a white awning and glass frontage.
See Aaron Betsky (ed.), Unfinished &
Far Far Away (2023).
14
2021–2023
Dunedin Railway Station
(1905–1906)
Anzac Avenue, Dunedin
Salmond Reed Architects
The George Alexander Troup-designed
Railway Station, completed in 1906, is
one of Dunedin’s most significant and
admired buildings. The conservation
project was led by Salmond Reed’s
Phillip Hartley, working with a team
of specialists including stonemasons
and metal fabricators. It was primarily
a repair project, meaning as much
of the old fabric as possible was kept
and repaired, and only that which
was beyond repair was replaced.
This approach was applied for the
stone walls, Marseille tiled roof and
copper-clad cupolas: conservation at
its best. A YouTube video with those
involved discussing the project is worth
searching out.
Supported by
12 Other
2015–2019 Addresses
Christchurch Town Hall
(1966–1972) As expected, the
86 Kilmore Street, Christchurch properties owned and/
Warren and Mahoney or managed by Heritage
New Zealand Pouhere
Taonga exemplify best-
practice conservation
work. Favourites include:
Pompallier
5 The Strand, Russell
Kerikeri Mission House
That modern buildings can have 218 Kerikeri Road,
heritage value is increasingly accepted Kerikeri
but it still took a vocal campaign,
led by lobby group Keep Our Town
Hall, to convince the Christchurch Stone Store
City Council that the city’s Town Hall 248 Kerikeri Road,
warranted repair and refurbishment Kerikeri (best shop)
after the Canterbury earthquakes.
Eventually, Council approved it, with
Māngungu Mission
site remediation, relevelling, and new
foundations and floors all needed. See House
Ian Lochhead (ed.), The Christchurch 107 Motukiore Road,
Town Hall 1965–2019 (2019). Young Māngungu
Architects’ repair and refurbishment
of Miles Warren’s Dorset Street Flats
Alberton
(1956–1957) are also wonderful. Both
projects earned NZIA National Awards, 100 Mount Albert Road,
in 2021 and 2023 respectively. Mount Albert, Auckland
Highwic
Sources 40 Gillies Avenue,
Epsom, Auckland
This itinerary was informed
by research conducted for
the recently published book, Antrim House
Architectural Conservation in 63 Boulcott Street,
Australia, New Zealand and Wellington
the Pacific Islands: National
Experiences and Practice, written
with John H. Stubbs, William Old St Paul’s
Chapman, Ross King and another 34 Mulgrave Street,
60 contributors, and published Thorndon, Wellington
by Routledge. For information,
see Routledge’s website. It is
Fyffe House
the fourth in an international
series of books led by Stubbs, Avoca Point,
comes almost 25 years after Kaikōura
Alexander Trapeznik’s still
very useful Common Ground?: Timeball Station
Heritage and Public Places
2 Reserve Terrace,
in New Zealand (Dunedin:
University of Otago Press, 2000) Lyttelton
and includes a bibliography of
sources on historic preservation Totara Estate
in New Zealand (pp. 325–327). Alma–Maheno Road
Notable in the bibliography is
(SH1), Totara,
the growing number of PhD
theses on heritage conservation near Oamaru (best
topics. For information on the Devonshire tea)
individual places in the itinerary,
the Heritage New Zealand For more on great house
Pouhere Taonga website is an
museums, see Sebastian
excellent starting point, and the
NZIA’s growing online database of Clarke’s Itinerary in
local and national awards is also Architecture NZ, Jan/Feb
increasingly valuable. 2022, pp. 87–89.
Architecture New Zealand 87
A PlaceMakers Promotion

A LONG BAY FAREWELL

A stunning entertainer’s home
in Auckland’s Long Bay was the
last hurrah for a boutique design
and build company prior to
seeking new adventures in the
South Island.
AFTER ALMOST 15 YEARS IN BUSINESS,
husband and wife team Adam and Michelle
Leonard moved to the South Island with their
young family for new adventures and careers.
Their last Auckland project – an eye-
catching North Shore home – is an outstanding
testimony to their careers together and a prime
example of how architecture and design can
come together to create an ultimate living space.
Owners Jason and Pauline Stockill wanted a
monochromatic palette, privacy and a seamless
flow between indoor and outdoor spaces, with
entertainment areas for friends and family and
a mancave that is the envy of the Shore. More
than that, Jason and Pauline wanted a low-
maintenance home to dovetail in with their
busy work and social lives.
With that in mind, Michelle began
investigating a mix of exterior cladding options
to deliver a minimalist, modern look together
with ease of maintenance and longevity.
“Cedar is an obvious natural option but
it requires lots of care and regular oiling or
staining to maintain,” says Michelle. “Whereas
thermally modified timber like Lunawood
(JSC TMT Taiga) delivers beautiful, natural,
rustic characteristics and the oil treatment
gives it a long-lasting protection. It was also
surprisingly competitive.”
01 Supplied by PlaceMakers, Lunawood is
chemical-free and the thermal modification
process gives it a rich, brown tone. It is
imported from Europe and profiled locally
01 Architect
Michelle Leonard
by JSC to New Zealand-approved profiles.
specified Its unique personality is further enhanced by
Lunawood (JSC the distinct oval-shaped ‘butterfly knots’ –
TMT Taiga) for
both the exterior something that caught Michelle’s designer eye.
and an interior “The butterflies are quite special and work
feature wall. really well with the dark tones,” says Michelle.
02 The exterior “We chose the Scumble Nightfall oil coating
Lunawood is
coated with because it gave us the depth of colour we
Scumble needed.”
Nightfall oil, But Michelle didn’t only consider Lunawood
adding depth
and long-lasting for the exterior; she amplified the interior
02
protection. cathedral ceiling by using the dark-stained

88
 05

03–04
Lunawood (JSC
TMT Taiga)
is thermally
modified
timber, boasting
a beautiful
rustic charm
03
and enduring
nature.
05–06 An
entertainer’s
dream with
monochromatic
textures that
create ever-
changing
character
throughout the
day and night.

Architecture
04 and Design:
Michelle
Leonard
Builder:
Lunawood on a feature wall. This continuation Adam Leonard
brings the natural textures indoors and blends in Client:
seamlessly with the TV, fireplace and oak stairs. Jason and
Pauline Stockill
The combination of the dark-stained vertical
Cladding:
Taiga cladding, white bevelback cladding and
Lunawood
clean-white, plastered-finish walls created the (JSC TMT Taiga)
monochrome effect the clients wanted, and the 06
supplied by
PlaceMakers.
home stands out beautifully against the green
backdrop of the Long Bay Reserve.
From every angle, the exterior is a stunning
composition of considered design and attention
to detail. Call it a ‘last hurrah’ or a swan song
but this entertainer’s paradise now stands as
testimony to the collaboration between a builder
and an architect who just happen to be forging For more information, visit:
new chapters together in southern lands. www.placemakers.co.nz/online/projects/cladding

89
Crit / Book
Architectural Conservation
in Australia, New Zealand
and the Pacific Islands:
National Experiences and Practice
John H. Stubbs, William Chapman,
Julia Gatley and Ross King
Routledge, 2024
This book is the latest in the Time Honored
Architectural Conservation Documentation
series, which surveys architectural
conservation history and practice in various
world regions. Previous volumes have been:
Architectural Conservation in Asia: National
Experiences and Practice by John H. Stubbs
and Robert G. Thompson (Routledge, 2017);
Architectural Conservation in Europe and the
Americas by John H. Stubbs and Emily G.
Makaš (Wiley, 2011); and the foundational
Time Honored: A Global View of Architectural
Conservation by John H. Stubbs (Wiley, 2009).
Richard A. Engelhardt (UNESCO Chair
Professor of Heritage Management) states
in the Foreword that “outstanding examples
of cultural and natural heritage are of
‘universal’ value wherever in the world they
may be located.” He notes that the authors
have examined recent trends in architectural
heritage protection “through the lens of this
global transformation towards localization
in heritage conservation practice;” and also
acknowledges how challenging it was for them,
given the cultural and historic diversity of this
geographically vast region of the Pacific. From
the authors’ Preface: “While cultures evolve
and transform, it is in heritage that we find our
continuity and identity.”
Fifty-nine contributors (from Australia,
Aotearoa New Zealand, USA and UK) have
provided: sub-chapters; and strategic essay
inserts, which highlight significant historical
and current events, episodes, characters,
buildings and movements; and, also, the
occasional heritage problem. The book’s text is
structured in four parts:
Part I is entitled Introduction to Pacific
Heritage Conservation. It is a scene-setting
contextual analysis of the overall Pacific region:
its geography, geologies and climates (including
current and predicted effects of climate change);
histories, cultures and vernacular building
90 Architecture New Zealand
01
01 The book is the latest in the Time Honored Architectural Conservation Documentation series.
02 Introduction to Pacific Heritage Conservation: The Pacific Ocean (general). Map by
Leonardo Leiva Rivera.
practices; historic explorations of the Pacific and
subsequent industry, trade and colonisation;
and the cultural impacts of World War 2.
The introduction concludes with extensive
consideration of the ways in which a heritage
‘conservation ethos’ has evolved in the Pacific
region, including the ICOMOS charters of
Australia and New Zealand.
Part II and Part III collectively comprise seven
chapters, each devoted to a nation or extended
island group in the Pacific region. Each
chapter commences with a location-specific
exposition of the broad contextual themes laid
down in the Part I Introduction. Subsequent
narratives are variably structured, according to
the priorities and particulars of each location.
These are well illustrated, with architectural
conservation examples (including buildings
of the Modern Movement) of preservation,
restoration, reconstruction, adaptive re-use and
the occasional relocation. Pacific Island heritage
is multilayered, and there are appropriate
reminders that heritage conservation needs
to take account of both cultural tangibles
and ‘intangibles’. Each chapter (and Part I
Introduction) concludes with an extensive list of
endnotes and related readings.
II.1. Australia. The introduction to this
substantial chapter is titled ‘The Infinite
Past’, alluding to the reality that indigenous
02
Aboriginals have inhabited the continent
for approximately 65,000 years. There is an
engaging evaluation of Aboriginal cultural
heritage, noting its recent acknowledgement
as an ‘Indigenous Renaissance’.
Conservation through adaptive re-use is
given extensive discussion and reportage.
This segues into a critique of examples
of contemporary ‘façadism’ and ‘pastiche’
(grafting of historical motifs onto the ‘new’).
Regarding the preservation of modernist
architecture, there are numerous examples
discussed and illustrated, with particular
attention given to the work of Harry
Seidler and that of the Griffins (Walter
Burley and Marion Mahony). Pragmatics of
conservation practice are illustrated in an
essay insert about recent upgrades on the
Sydney Opera House.
A substantive analysis of the ICOMOS
‘Burra’ Charter (first drafted in 1979) is
accompanied by an essay insert, which
highlights conceptual connections with
Austrian art historian Alois Riegl’s
sophisticated ‘value based’ conservation
theory.
II.2. Aotearoa New Zealand. This chapter
has a bicultural heritage construct. The
narrative commences with an outline of pre-
European Māori occupation and building
 Crit / Book

practice. Subsequent contributions include: and management under the Antarctic Treaty illustrated (in monochrome). But this is not a
analysis of marae and wharenui typologies; (1961) and the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New glossy picture book for the coffee table. It has
conservation of Māori architecture and Zealand) (1987), are given detailed descriptions a well-planned, scholarly construct, including
establishment of the Māori Heritage Council; along with outlines of the conservation extensive endnoted reference citations
and an engaging statement on a ‘Kaupapa challenges in such a cold climate. and related reading lists in each section.
Māori’ approach to architectural conservation. IV. Closing Comments. The conclusion For example, the Aotearoa New Zealand
The ICOMOS New Zealand Charter (2010), alludes to two ‘catastrophic’ historic influences section of 107 pages has 570 endnotes and
bicultural in its formation, is given extensive on the shaping of Pacific Island cultures: a list of 70 related readings. Stated by the
discussion. colonisation and the WW2 Pacific War. authors in the Preface: “This book is written
Creation of the Historic Places Trust (now However, it also encouragingly notes a “recent for professionals, students and all others
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga) is Indigenous Renaissance” across the region. interested in cultural heritage management
highlighted as a legislative response to the Architectural heritage conservation has an in the Pacific region”. This is, indeed, a
unfortunate demolition of Partington’s Mill in important role to play: “to keep our memories significant ‘top-shelf’ research source.
Auckland (1950). There are other examples of and thus our identities, to remind us of who we A pertinent concluding quote, from
tragic demolitions and a piece about heritage are, of where we have come from, also to reveal NZIA’s Heritage and Conservation
outcomes after the Canterbury earthquakes. losses of the past and obliquely to warn us of Guidelines (2010)”:
Examples are also included of significant what may lie ahead”. “Our ability to respond to places of
restoration projects, such as Christchurch The book’s end matter includes a Glossary heritage value should be based on a
Town Hall and Futuna Chapel, of adaptive of Region-Specific and Conservation Terms, professional concern for these values, a
re-use and of urban interventions where a a general Reference list of Architectural good understanding of the discipline of
new building has been sensitively integrated Conservation texts, Image Credits and Index. conservation, and the pursuit of a quality,
into the existing urban fabric. Architectural This is an impressive publication and the built environment.”
conservation education, and current encyclopaedic content of the 592 pages is well Graeme McConchie
courses and programmes, are given detailed
consideration.
III.3. Hawai’i – Hawaiian Islands and
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
III.4. Micronesia – Guam, Northern Mariana
Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau,
Marshall Islands, Kiribati.
III.5. Melanesia – Papua New Guinea,
Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji.
03 04
III.6. South Pacific Polynesia – Tonga,
Samoa, Niue, Cook Islands, French Polynesia,
Pitcairn, Rapa Nui.
Each island and island grouping is given
individual analysis of its specific geography,
prehistory and cultural traditions, early
settlement and colonisation, traditional
vernacular building practice and crafts.
Heritage sites, current conservation practice
and associated challenges are discussed, 05 06
with episodes in individual histories also
highlighted. 03 Aotearoa New 04 Australia: 05 Aotearoa 06 Polar Regions
Imagery: Courtesy of Routledge.

III.7. Polar Regions of the Pacific (Aleutian Zealand: Partington’s Rose Seidler House, New Zealand: Futuna of the Pacific:
Mill, Auckland (1851), 1948–1950 (Harry Chapel, saved from interior of Shackleton’s
Islands, north Pacific; Ross Sea region, a dominant landmark Seidler, architect). demolition by the Hut at Cape Royds.
Antarctica). on the city skyline until Photograph by trust that purchased Photograph by
1950. Its demolition Rory Hyde. it in 2003. Photograph Chris Ansin, courtesy
The Ross Sea region includes Ross Island, led to the creation by Paul McCredie. of the Antarctic
Scott Base and McMurdo Station – locations of the New Zealand Heritage Trust.
Historic Places Trust.
with expedition huts and associated artefacts. Photograph by Henry
These historic sites, with heritage protection Winkelmann.

Architecture New Zealand 91

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 Crit / Book

Sheppard & Rout Architects

Vol 1 1982–2021
David Sheppard
Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2023

Architectural books are a bit like buildings.

There’s magic inside and much ado in their
making. There are, of course, rewards in
all the reading and writing, as that English
teacher no doubt foretold, but, equally, there’s
homework to be found when architecturally
moonlighting a book. It is hard to be hands
off when you are the main characters and,
with architects being nocturnally busy with
the day job, building literary adventures
as well as everything else requires some
endeavour. There’s a whole new cast of
characters to plot a course amongst. Add to
the publishers, publicists and proofreaders,
teams of graphic artists, distributors and
editors, not to mention accountants and
the inevitability of a book-length practical
completion list.
Bigger questions follow, though, for just
as buildings vary so, too, do architectural
monographs. Are you building a Brittanica-
esque set of volumes or a shorter story CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Christchurch International Airport 1998 (cover image: Stephen Goodenough),
Stranges and Glendenning Hill Building 2014 (image: Peter Cui), Black Rock House 2018 (image: Jason Mann),
detailing a single building? Is this current or Rout House 1979 (image supplied).
REFERENCE 1 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598–99), Act 3, sc. 3, l. 14.
more of an autobiographical greatest hits?
There’s a fit to be found amongst options of
tome and whimsy, local and international, size for value when it comes to architects what they’ve been up to: Sheppard & Rout
between the anthologies of coffee and cake narrating their adventures. The whats, hows Architects Vol 1 1982–2021, published by
or a choice of something stronger. Check the and whys of architecture are generally hard Christchurch’s Quentin Wilson Publishing.
word count because the questions extend to find in fast-ticking visuals and, while most Bravo, homework complete! Forty years in
outwards. Are you hardbacking freight architects now stream, few find opportunity the making and the voices of some much
and strength, or softbacking something to actually present work. So, amongst the respected former, retired and current
less durable but lighter in its footprint? braveries to building a book, it surprises that practitioners suggest there’s important
To architects, writer’s block might not be not more practices take on the challenge schooling to be found inside.
stranger than fiction; it might simply be of printing out what they’ve been up to. Correct. There’s much to learn from this
friction. Much ado about anything takes Architecturally, becoming “well-favoured” Christchurch practice, whose offerings
time. Think of those piles of half-read books comes with much skill and hard work and include not just highly decorated buildings,
cluttering your bedside or sitting-room table. at least a little “gift of fortune” as William but practice and personal contributions to the
Is there real estate in my bookcase for all Shakespeare puts it. Yet, consider, too, the architectural profession that span from the
this? call of the literary for, as Shakespeare follows, protagonist to the presidential. Their work
Yet recording things is important; it’s “but to write and read comes by nature”.1 reaches from the small to urban large, from
the way we collectively learn. As oral We are, after all, part of the great generalist neighbourly to international but, notably,
communications have become written and profession and architecture is a much-ado- starts with local context. A quick jump into
then visual, laying architectural stories out about-everything type of calling. the forwards sets up the where-froms in their
remains no less important. The shortening It is into this literary narrative that editor first four decades of practice. The generous
of information into increasingly small bites David Sheppard and the team at Sheppard time frame is important for, as art historian
doesn’t seem to match the increasing byte & Rout Architects find time to chronicle Ian Lochhead writes: “Implicitly we are asked

Architecture New Zealand 93

Crit / Book
to consider what role Sheppard & Rout have
played in this phase of our architectural
history”. The monograph set up here surveys
a long list of practice projects to connect into
a wider commentary of the ways in which
architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand has
developed. It is from here we might project
forward to the where-tos.
S&R has racked up a large number of
commissions so, understandably, not all
of their some two-and-a-half-thousand
buildings are collated. But, there are too
many buildings included for me to count,
each succinctly catalogued into typologies
to highlight the enormous variety in
their work: Residential, Apartments &
Townhouses, Urban Design & Master-
Planning, Commercial & Hospitality, Public,
Interiors, International and Health &
Education. There is a lot to traverse and not
many building functions that the practice
hasn’t worked. Sheppard’s design summation
of commonalities between their buildings
94 Architecture New Zealand
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Spark Square
2020 (image: Dennis Radermacher), Cranmer
Court 1982 (image supplied), BNZ Centre 2017
(image: Jason Mann), Cranmer Court 1982
(drawing: Nick Jackson).
being found in “forms that are simply
modelled, crisp and robust, and which relate
harmoniously in their landscape or urban
setting” begins to aesthetically tie the many
projects together.
But it is the collection of biographical
accounts from key players within the practice
that works to direct the notable architectural
contributions and listing of buildings that
follow. There’s a reflective approach which
comes with experience. With the buildings
spanning four decades, you can well imagine
the cultural, fashion, political and landscape
changes to be navigated. There’s plenty to
place, and the narration highlights not just
the importance of people within the life,
work and durability of a practice but, also,
of cities: most notably S&R’s home town,
Christchurch.
Experience remains vital in navigating
shifting grounds like those after the
Canterbury earthquakes. Individual and
shared philosophies towards the rebuild help
those of us further away to draw lessons to
a broader context. Jasper Van der Lingen
expertly talks heritage, timber construction
and open laneways in the rebuild, Tim Dagg
to the importance of local environments.
The newer crop of Matt Gutsell, Joff
Kennedy, Steven Orr and Melissa Rogers
look to the future of practice and place. Yet,
it is the drawing of the practice philosophy
backwards to its formation where this
monograph and practice set its chronology:
notably, from its two founding partners,
David Sheppard and Jonty Rout.
Rout died in 2003 and his account,
drawn from an interview with Morrin
Rout, talks to his overseas experience, the
trials of early practice, eventual embassy
work and S&R’s strong lineage in housing,
which continues today. Sheppard similarly
cites his own international experience as
providing “a strong ongoing influence on
his [and we follow to S&R’s] architectural
practice”. Between 1967 and 1975, Sheppard
travelled, studied and worked for American
practices on large urban environments. The
account takes us from Greyhound buses
to architecture and city planning at Penn
State and, ultimately, to big-world urban
development planning and politics on both
coasts of America and in London, the kind of
which few architects from these parts get to
tackle. Nixon gave way to Muldoon in 1975
when Sheppard returned home. The two
founding partners eventually pooled their
combined know-how to establish Sheppard
& Rout Architects in Christchurch in 1982.
Their everything then follows.
‘Then’ is an important word in Sheppard
& Rout Architects Vol 1 1982–2021, for it
links the practice story. Four decades is not
something many practices can diarise and
marks more than a significant contribution.
So, hats off to S&R for 40 years of practice,
this chronicle surveying their practice to
date, and for printing it out for everyone to
learn from and enjoy. Some monographs
take volumes and Ian Lochhead keenly notes
their foray into architectural print is “clearly
intended to be an evolving project”. Sounds
like more ado homework to come.
Jeremy Smith
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