2025 Waikato/Bay of Plenty Architecture Awards Winner
Te Whare Hono o Tūwharetoa
A new civic administration building for Taupō District Council designed to facilitate the co-location of Ngāti Tūwharetoa entities with an intention to foster greater synergies between council and the iwi. The building weaves cultural narratives throughout, starting with the four levels of landings which are orientated on their own grid independently of the outer structure, assimilating important ancestral ley lines south to Tongariro and north towards Huka Falls and Aratiatia Rapids. The western interior wall of the atrium gives us an epic four-storey contemporary artwork depicting the important mythological narratives of Tūwharetoa. At the pinnacle of the work is the celestial waka, acknowledging the descendants of Ngātoroirangi, and then above this the physical mapping of the lunar cycle of Matariki across the width of the atrium wall to remind everyone of the seasonal modes of ways of being and working. It was pleasing for us to see Tūwharetoa occupying these top two floors in the ‘heavens’, a manifestation of a new cultural expression of hononga (connection), governance and the articulation of spatial awareness that architecture can bring.
- Practice
- DCA Architects of Transformation
- Category
- Commercial Architecture
- Location
- Waikato/Bay of Plenty
