Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2025 i Architecture NZ

DCA Architects of Transformation has teamed up with Plus Architecture to design a luxury hotel for Rotorua’s lakefront, to sit alongside RCG’s Wai Ariki Hot Springs and Spa. Client Pukeroa Lakefront Holdings Limited (PLHL) is currently seeking investor, developer and operator interest in the Noho Lakeside Hotel. Lead architect Werner Naudé of DCA says the proposed design reflects the natural features of the surrounding environment, including the scalloped edges of the lakefront, while maintaining a tikanga-Māori-based design framework at its heart. “The indicative concepts provide for a nearly 11,000m2 property, featuring 197 guest rooms, ground-floor hospitality, conference and function rooms, a gym, a pool and a rooftop bar,” says Naudé. PLHL Chairman, David Tapsell, says a lakefront hotel has always been part of the Pukeroa vision for the area and, specifically,…

Architecture here is rarely properly lost. Even now, as we navigate a way to higher-density living, we tend not to misplace buildings. There’s still the space to eye-spy our most wayward elevations. At worst, we might GPS a tricky driveway or pull out an Andrew Barrie map to pinpoint some retiring architecture. But what happens if you really diamond-up the density. At our country-wide 19-people-per-squarekilometre or even downtown Auckland’s sky-high 2500, you can see what’s coming and cities mostly plan out as planned. Teleport forward though to 45,000-people-per-square-kilometre and cities accelerate lives of their own. Here, anything and everything can be lost in the crowd, even buildings. So, on a 2024 invitation from the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscape and Settlements to share some Unfinished & Far Far Away adventures…

THERE IS A GIANT, BULBOUS SEA CREATURE on the Porirua Harbour foreshore, climbing its way out of the swamp on its bendy, misshapen legs and crawling south towards the North City Shopping Centre. The sea slug, Kai Tahi (‘food for sharing’), afloat in a sea of bland, big-box retailing that washes unrestrained over the foreshore, is a breakthrough in more ways than one. It provides a central location for food and events but is also a pathway to the future. It links the harbour to the cultural heart of Porirua: a challenge in this highly multicultural city. It provides an exchange point between generations, acting as a catalyst for a better Porirua. This is a sea slug, a taniwha, a kraken, a giant nudibranch, perhaps: a creature from the deep,…

LIKE MANY PRACTICES, WE have staff from a range of backgrounds; not a few are recent graduates from the nation’s universities. They arrive with a mix of skills and personalities, and we cast them deep into the melee that begins as the lift doors open revealing our gang, heads down focused on sketchbooks, monitors and iPads, music playing and an urgent, productive air. The younger arrivals are usually known entities. Each of them, invariably, has done some sort of time here as part of their studies, a nod and a wink transforming a passing midsemester sojourn into a permanent position following a robust examination by those who have worked with them. In these tough times, we are fortunate to have a wide pool of graduates to interview, though this is a…

Warren and Mahoney has launched a low-carbon design guide, Go Zero, for developers, designers, consultants and industry stakeholders, outlining the reasons that sustainable design matters and why it’s critical to invest in it, practical design strategies that can be implemented in real-world projects, and ways to measure and track carbon reductions. Warren and Mahoney’s Sustainability Lead, Emily Newmarch, says the guide provides clarity and actionable steps towards reducing the environmental impact of the built environment. “We found the design and construction industry has developed a well-meaning but almost impenetrable wall of jargon and theory on how to reduce the environmental impacts of projects,” says Newmarch. “For those at the start of a design process, this presents an intimidating disparity in knowledge and insight, which can lead to disengagement with the…

Hundertwasser’s home in the Kaurinui Valley, located just 20 minutes north of Kawakawa and less than a threehour drive from Auckland, is to be the only one of his homes around the world that is open to the public. I was given a tour by volunteers from Living Hundertwasser, including Richard Smart, who worked closely with Hundertwasser for eight years and now represents the non-profit Hundertwasser Foundation in New Zealand. Managed by the Foundation, Living Hundertwasser is an initiative dedicated to preserving and sharing Hundertwasser’s legacy. The team has restored his Kaurinui property and plans to open it to the public, connecting it with key sites such as the Whangārei Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery, the Hundertwasser Toilets and Te Hononga Hundertwasser Memorial Park in Kawakawa. Born…

I REMEMBER WHEN THE LIVING PĀ, NOW known as Ngā Mokopuna, was a twinkle in Professor Rawinia Higgins’ eye. At the time, I was working at Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington), where there was a strong desire amongst the whānau to create a second home on campus – one that would practicably support a sense of belonging, beyond the rabbit warren of offices and classrooms which characterised the five villas that made up the previous marae and Māori studies precinct. I was a student in these villas in the ’90s and the irony of ‘things Māori’ being contained within these colonial boxes was not lost on many. It seemed time to create meaningful space that celebrated ‘all things Māori’. The site is a challenging one – a tight…

THE GOAL OF STACKING GAMES IS TO position elements, such as cards or blocks, strategically, above or beside one another to gain height without collapse. These games test a player’s motor neurone skills and are enacted in physical (House of Cards, Jenga…) and digital (Tetris…) forms. Given the societal value of play, stacking has, naturally enough, toppled over into architecture. Architectural stacking became a late-20th-century design strategy for layering building spaces and volumes (vertically, horizontally, diagonally) to address urban density, structural efficiency, functional organisation and technological advancement. As with stacking games, architectural stacking is evident in many forms. With metabolism, Moshe Safdie’s prefabricated Lego-like modular units in Habitat (1967).1 In postmodernism, Philip Johnson witfully deployed a classical pediment atop a modern skyscraper (1984). 2, 3 High technician Richard Rogers stacked service…

AVONDALE LIES TO THE WEST OF AUCKLAND’S CBD and travelling there, while avoiding motorways, presents a random sampling of the hits and many misses of the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP). Heading out on Great North Road and returning along New North Road, one can see much that is new but very little that is great, or even good. The Community Lane development at Highbury Triangle in Avondale is an exception that is well worth the journey. Here, 50 former Housing New Zealand (HNZ) single-storey residences have been deconstructed and replaced by five new six-to-eightstorey blocks with 236 new units for disabled and the ‘aged’ (those over 55…). Well oriented, making best use of the site and its existing mature trees, and dignified in its architecture, Community Lane is a very…

Wednesday 2 April 2025 Te Ao Mārama, Auckland War Memorial Museum Architects, not Architecture is a renowned global series of conversations that seeks to uncover the narratives, experiences and influences that shape architects, rather than focusing on the buildings that have given them their name. Packed with star power, previous events have featured architectural luminaries from Bjarke Ingels to Elizabeth Diller, from Aires Mateus to Alison Brooks. On an autumnal March evening, the event landed in Tāmaki Makaurau, under the iconic dome of the Auckland Museum in somewhat arctic temperatures. A trio of Aotearoa’s distinguished talents took to the stage: Elisapeta Heta of Jasmax, Sally Ogle of Patchwork Architecture and Christopher Kelly of Architecture Workshop. Each presented a deeply personal exploration of their journey, wrestling with the challenge of discussing…