A bright red ribbon of metal buckles out of the ground in suburban Auckland, ramping up at a sharp angle before cranking over in a lopsided arc. It frames a big glass wall, folded in a diagonal crease, whose striped surface is covered in a riot of patterns, with abstract motifs of waves, fish and stars swirling together in a polychromatic frenzy. This is Taumata o Kupe, a new Māori meeting house and education centre for the Mahurehure community, and one of the brightest beacons of Aotearoa New Zealand’s burgeoning contemporary Māori architecture scene.
“The project is the work of Māori-led practice TOA, or traditional Māori knowledge. “This is our beautiful castle,” says tribe member Shannon Wilson. “It celebrates how our ancestors discovered this land.” He is standing inside the hall, having conducted a traditional ceremony of songs and speeches in Māori (the Māori language), to welcome me on to the , the tribe’s sacred meeting grounds. It is a lofty space, where the window patterns cast swirling graphic shadows across the floor and walls, giving the impression of intricate Māori carvings. “The images tell the story of the great Kupe,” says Wilson, “one of the first Polynesian navigators to arrive in New Zealand. His wife gave our country the Māori name Aotearoa, meaning ‘long white cloud’, after seeing the clouds hovering above the island from their .”
