Nga Puna Ora-Waters that bring life and well-being Part 2 Project 2004 Nick DaltonGeorgia Thomas University of Auckland Auckland | New Zealand Nga Puna Ora : ‘Waters that bring life and well-being’ is situated in a place of social significance, with a legacy of ill will and source of much bitterness. Here the metaphor of a water treatment facility is a catalyst for an awakening concerned with cleansing and the healing of the division of ‘us and them’ in the landscape of a poly-cultural New Zealand. Stoic fundamentally embedded in the site and tectonically intertwined with ancestral ‘tipuna’ vessel ‘waka’ building technique. It is an offering to society, the creation of a common ground where all are truly Tangatawhenua, ‘people of the land’. Formed at the scale of landscape and city, and oriented towards the ocean by which Aotearoa / New Zealand was discovered by Polynesian and European navigators, Nga Puni Ora both commemorates and cleanses the site of bi-cultural conflict in New Zealand. Programmatic, spatial, and material vocabularies are highly personal yet generously social; having developed from a genealogical investigation of the student’s own, not untypical, cultural heritage. At a more intimate scale, the detailed project - for a water purification facility - draws on shared craft traditions, of building and carving, to develop a sustainable architecture of invitation and inclusion. Tutor(s)