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Rore kahu
Rore kahu
Oihi Road, Te Tii, New Zealand
Project Featured on Oct 08, 2015
Project of the Day on Oct 08, 2015
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Rore kahu
Oihi Road, Te Tii, New Zealand
Project Featured on Oct 08, 2015
Project of the Day on Oct 08, 2015
Firm
STATUS
Built
YEAR
2014
SIZE
0 sqft - 1000 sqft
BUDGET
$500K - 1M
Photos
This project seeks to commemorate a significant event in New Zealand history – the bicentenary of the first arrival of Christian missionaries to Aotearoa-New Zealand under the auspices of Ruatara, the local Maori chief. Missionary Samuel Marsden’s Christmas Day 1814 sermon on an isolated beach in the far north of the country's North Island is considered the first formal engagement of Maori, the indigenous people of the country, and pakeha, the Maori name for Europeans.
The project proposes that the valley behind the beach be used to commemorate the event through restoration of native planting and the introduction of two components: a path linking the hilltop car park with the beach below, and an interpretive/orientation structure. Entry to the site from the hilltop road leads through groves of head high manuka and kanuka bushes to the interpretive structure that has been named Rore Kahu by local Maori in honour of the now extinct native eagle.
The building is composed of a pair of high, tapered, enfolding walls of rammed earth upon which a quotation from the Bible in Maori and English is placed:
“Behold! I bring you glad tidings of great joy
He kaikauwhau tenei ahau ki a koutou mo te hari nui”.
The walls open down the valley to the beach below and above the enclosure a triangulated roof structure, constructed of a composite carbon fibre and foam sandwich, provides shelter from sun and rain. From Rore Kahu the visitor is able to take in the full extent of the valley and the landmarks that remain as traces of the earlier occupation – as a Maori proverb goes:
“ Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua – as man disappears from sight, the land remains”.
The valley reflects the duality of our country’s occupation – on one side regenerating, native planting, on the other the pastoral enclosures of a large sheep farm and dominating it all, the terraced hilltop of chief Ruatara’s Rangihoua Pa (Maori defensive position).
The project abandons national vernaculars in favour of searching for a new spatial and tectonic model to occupy the space between the two cultures, the brief stating “it shall be neither chapel nor marae (Maori meeting ground)”. The earth walls might be seen as referring to the earth ramparts of Rangihoua Pa, the roof to contemporary digital manufacture and to the Maori name for New Zealand – Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. The walls employed hard physical labour – mixing and compacting the cement stabilised clay – while the roof was designed and developed with architects, engineers, material suppliers, and manufacturers iteratively analysing the design, refining, and analysing again to eliminate areas of high loading and consequent high cost. The supporting steel posts incorporate roof drainage and were produced by a similar process of modelling, iterative refinement, and digitally controlled milling.
The project proposes that the valley behind the beach be used to commemorate the event through restoration of native planting and the introduction of two components: a path linking the hilltop car park with the beach below, and an interpretive/orientation structure. Entry to the site from the hilltop road leads through groves of head high manuka and kanuka bushes to the interpretive structure that has been named Rore Kahu by local Maori in honour of the now extinct native eagle.
The building is composed of a pair of high, tapered, enfolding walls of rammed earth upon which a quotation from the Bible in Maori and English is placed:
“Behold! I bring you glad tidings of great joy
He kaikauwhau tenei ahau ki a koutou mo te hari nui”.
The walls open down the valley to the beach below and above the enclosure a triangulated roof structure, constructed of a composite carbon fibre and foam sandwich, provides shelter from sun and rain. From Rore Kahu the visitor is able to take in the full extent of the valley and the landmarks that remain as traces of the earlier occupation – as a Maori proverb goes:
“ Whatungarongaro te tangata toitū te whenua – as man disappears from sight, the land remains”.
The valley reflects the duality of our country’s occupation – on one side regenerating, native planting, on the other the pastoral enclosures of a large sheep farm and dominating it all, the terraced hilltop of chief Ruatara’s Rangihoua Pa (Maori defensive position).
The project abandons national vernaculars in favour of searching for a new spatial and tectonic model to occupy the space between the two cultures, the brief stating “it shall be neither chapel nor marae (Maori meeting ground)”. The earth walls might be seen as referring to the earth ramparts of Rangihoua Pa, the roof to contemporary digital manufacture and to the Maori name for New Zealand – Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. The walls employed hard physical labour – mixing and compacting the cement stabilised clay – while the roof was designed and developed with architects, engineers, material suppliers, and manufacturers iteratively analysing the design, refining, and analysing again to eliminate areas of high loading and consequent high cost. The supporting steel posts incorporate roof drainage and were produced by a similar process of modelling, iterative refinement, and digitally controlled milling.
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