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Nga Puna Ora-Waters that bring life and well-being

Part 2 Project 2004
Nick Dalton
Georgia 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’.
Nick Dalton
Georgia Thomas


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)

2004
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