For Kaikohe: weaving peoples, generations and stories together

Abstract

How can architecture suture a fractured community by providing infrastructure for resilience, weaving together peoples, generations and stories? Kaikohe, a small town of the Ngāpuhi iwi, located in the Northland region, has suffered the destructive effects of crime through the establishment of Ngawha Prison, struggling local business, unemployment, exacerbated gang activity, and youth delinquency. Despite these trying situations, an overwhelming and undoubtable sense of pride in their town and whānau flows from Kaikohe’s people. A yearning to learn Kaikohe’s story and to contribute to its optimistic future is the motivation for this thesis. This thesis offers a cohesive urban revitalisation along the main arterial road of Kaikohe, connecting proposed community pavilions to a wider articulation of the town’s identity. It will tell the story of both Kaikohe’s past and its vision forward. Weaving, a cultural practice of the Ngāpuhi people, endowed with spiritual values of unity and togetherness, is translated to site strategies and structural techniques. The project weaves together generations on its site, akin to the harakeke bush’s articulation of the tūpuna (grandparents) and awhi rito (parents) protecting the rito (child), reflecting the importance of whānau in Maori culture. These poetics, alongside the kohekohe tree, intergenerational connection, empowerment and the kākahu, contribute to a series of ideas for the spatial and aesthetic identity of Kaikohe. The project that this thesis will interrogate has become pointed and site specific, but has emerged from a broader enquiry into the relationship between architecture and crime. This research began from an interest in New Zealand’s unprecedented prison population and failure to reduce reoffending rates, and through a research-by-design process, has progressed to an enquiry into architecture’s potential contribution to the restoration of a real-life town that has seen a decline in its livelihood due to the effects of crime. This thesis observes this organic and unpredictable process of brief-making and design, with all of its successes and challenges. At its core, this thesis is a documentation of the logistics and ethics of working with a real community, a foreign culture and other architectural practices, and the resulting influences on the design process. As a result, this thesis follows a long and ever-changing journey of an idea.