Matariki
The Body, The Journey, The Stars.
A Waka Ama clubhouse for the Portage Crossing Outrigger Canoe Club is the new home for Waka Ama. It provides not only dock space but facilitates Māori storytelling. A clubhouse, Oratory, community gardens, and memorial are among the spaces providing for the needs of the growing Māngere Bridge community.
My process started with research and readings. Inspired by Filipe Tohi and a range of Māori and Pasifika designs, I explored lashing and its techniques. The different forms and patterns of lashings in both the 2D and 3D were explored via charcoal, watercolour, balsa, string, and mesh. Taking these into the digital realm, 3D forms and structures were placed on site contours and 2D plans were placed on aerials of the site, showing the span and connection between buildings.
My design research led me to a range of buildings, referencing key ideas in Te Ao Māori & more specifically, the ideas within Matariki. Named after the nine stars of Matariki, the nine buildings stretch across the Mangere Bridge site, connected via a central spine procession and eel-like paths. It references a coming together/meeting point: Ranginui & Papatūānuku, past and future, and the land, stars, and sea.
Pōhutukawa is to remember what came before. The memorial space allows those who have passed to look out over the journeys of the living; the tides lap against the memorial as a cleansing of the body, and the building reaches skywards in a Ziggurat formation to ascend toward Ranginui.
Twisted vertebrae erupt through the land like contorted Waka bones, connecting departures. They cut through Waipuna-a-rangi, the procession space containing key amenities. Its structure collects the rainwater.
The remaining buildings reference the stars Ururangi (wind), Waiti and Waita (fresh/salt-water bodies), Tupu-a-nuku and Tupu-a-rangi (growth in the ground and sky), Hiwa-i-te-rangi (aspirations), and the constellation’s namesake Matariki (reflections, hope, environment and the gathering/health and wellbeing of people).
