Auckland's Māori Design Hub gets a "refresh"

Te Kaunihera o Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland Council) has announced a “refreshed” Māori Design Hub to help facilitate best practice Māori design in the city. Landscape architect Phil Wihongi, who is the council’s Māori Design Leader, says the Hub includes new resources that have evolved out of the Downtown Infrastructure Development Programme (Te Wānaga - the new downtown public space and Quay Street Enhancements projects) which have benefitted from fresh approaches to engagement with Mana Whenua in these transformational public realm developments.

The refreshed Hub also introduces  Māori housing resources on papakāinga (housing/living on Māori land) and design solutions for urban Māori housing on general title land, which have been titled Kāinga Hou. “This work recognises the difference between the two and the need for differentiation between the concepts,” Wihongi says. 

Render of Ukutoia: Kāinga Hou concept design

“There’s new conceptual design work that’s included there. We’ve had a local Māori architecture firm help us with the design work, examining the intensification of suburban lots. We’ve got an ambitious infill development which stems off this set of Māori values that underpin this thinking and we’ve also had a crack at a terrace housing typology as well. The next step is to look at designing a vertical high-rise development in an urban setting, again founded on these core Māori values”

The design concepts have been created to stimulate thinking on higher density Māori housing as a way to provide affordable and culturally responsive homes and make better use of land as Tāmaki Makaurau continues to intensify.

Wihongi says the Māori Design Hub is the second most used part of the Auckland Design Manual, and anayltics also show it has a really high uptake from students and teaching institutions. “We’re trying to keep things as current and relevant as we can,” Wihongi says of the refresh. “There are resources now that we know from talking to people they’re looking for.”

Render of Quay Street design looking east to historic Ferry Building.

“There’s an outrageous paucity of Māori practitioners in the built environment design disciplines and an outrageous paucity of Māori educators in this (design) space so it’s a helpful resource, says Wihongi. 

Wihongi, who’s also tumuaki (chair) of Te Tau-a-Nuku (Māori Landscape Architects collective) believes the Tuia Pito Ora/NZILA executive is “making good movement to improving” the inclusion of Te Ao Māori in it’s fundamental principles.

A good example, he says, is the current work on landscape assessment guidelines that is being actively supported by the institute. “Te Tau-a-Nuku has been involved deeply in the formation of those, he says. “You’ll see within those there’s a very strong acknowledgement of the importance of Te Ao Māori for the practice of landscape architecture in Aotearoa/New Zealand. 

“If we’re trying to be authentic in reponding to place we need to be more conscious and accepting in recognising the Māori experience of place as the fundamental footing for everything else. And those assessment guidelines open the door to that conversation quite well.”

Wihongi says Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland’s, and in fact Aotearoa Māori culture is the point of difference in the world.  “And if we don’t have Māori communities and our Mana Whenua communities in particular and the culture and understanding of place that runs with them then we’re little different from other anglo-settler societies. And that’s played out in our architectural forms and design of space and place. That’s what we’ve inherited and are now looking to reimagine through collective and collaborative endeavour.

“We have a strapline that we run at work and with our collaborators and it’s about trying to move from Auckland to Tāmaki Makaurau. If you dig into that name, and into what that name means in a contemporary context it’s completely about this place and its continuing desirablity for the many who continue to arrive to make Tāmaki Makaurau their home.

“So by getting away from that notion of Auckland and the colonial machine that’s pretty much enabled what it is, it opens up to Māori in particular but also new cultures that are making us who we are in a contemporary sense. It’s an open invitation to all to participate in that shaping.”