Exhibitions showcase innovative coastal revitalisation
Inspired by a Swedish restaurant some critics say is the best in the world, a food-loving landscape architecture student at Victoria University of Wellington has devised a blueprint to transform disused dairy sheds on Kāpiti/Horowhenua coastal farmland.
Inspired by a Swedish restaurant some critics say is the best in the world, a food-loving landscape architecture student at Victoria University of Wellington has devised a blueprint to transform disused dairy sheds on Kāpiti/Horowhenua coastal farmland.
Yota Kojima’s innovative idea is just one of many that Master’s students from Victoria’s Faculty of Architecture and Design have come up with while working with iwi and hapū, their coastal farms and whānau trusts to revitalise a coastal plain that extends from the Ōtaki River in the south to the Ohau River near Levin in the north.
The aim of the project is to envisage the area as more resilient in the face of rising sea levels and other ecological threats—through design solutions that might then be used in similarly affected areas elsewhere in the country and overseas.
Mr Kojima’s concept is based on the Faviken Magasinet restaurant on a remote 8000ha nature reserve in northern Sweden. The restaurant attracts people from all over the world to eat gourmet food sourced from local ecologies. Mr Kojima, who also works as a ‘protein chef’ at Wellington’s Matterhorn restaurant, thinks such a dining experience would be the perfect use for some disused dairy sheds in his assignment.
“As part of my strategy, the farm would embrace climate change by establishing and farming a diversity of wetlands to act as buffers against rising sea levels, and by planting stands of kahikatea forest to protect against rising tides.”
For the project, students were asked to look at ways to restore ecosystems (including wetlands and dunes) as flood protection and to provide diverse habitats and resources. They also looked at where settlements should be located, at what farming practices could change, and at alternative sources of income.
Other ideas included interior architecture student Raana Pepere’s Māori handcraft workshop and gallery for a different shed and architecture student Toby Jeffery’s floating pools to replenish rapidly depleting whitebait populations.
The students’ work will feature in a new series of exhibitions at the Faculty of Architecture and Design in Wellington, the first of which has just opened.
The exhibitions are part of a collaboration with hapū from Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga and affiliated iwi that dates back to 2011, when the School of Architecture established a ‘bicultural studio’ with Dr Huhana Smith, Aroha Spinks and Moira Poutama (currently researchers with Te Rangi Limited, previously with Taiao Raukawa) as part of Manaaki Taha Moana (MTM), a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)-funded research programme. The studio allowed landscape architecture Master’s students to immerse themselves in Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and tikanga Māori (Māori customs) and at wānanga (intensive learning opportunities) at local marae.
The six-year Massey University-led MTM programme ended last year, but Te Rangi Limited, Victoria and Massey are now working on an eighteen-month collaboration with Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga and affiliated iwi as part of MBIE’s Deep South National Science Challenge Vision Mātauranga programme to enable Māori to adapt, manage risk and thrive in a changing climate.
This time architecture students (under Programme Director Professor Marc Aurel-Schnabel) and interior architecture students (under Senior Lecturer Sam Kebbell) are involved along with landscape architecture students—fifty-five in total.
Landscape architecture Professor Penny Allan says the exhibitions show not only the important role designers have to play in helping ecosystems adapt and regenerate but also the benefits of fully realised cultural collaborations.
“What often happens is that if non-Māori people design using Māori ideas they tend to revert to superficial pattern-making and symbols. The koru and spirals. It’s token. It’s not deeply embedded. What happens with this approach is you’re working with an exchange of values rather than an exchange of symbols. It’s a more sophisticated and meaningful relationship.”
The first exhibition in the series runs until 21 June and features a window display charting the cycles that influence the relationship between water and land in Kāpiti/Horowhenua and street lightboxes with photographs of the current landscape. From 21–25 June, examples of students’ work on the project will be on show in the Faculty foyer. The series will culminate mid-2017 with an overview exhibition Professor Allan hopes will later tour to other parts of the country and possibly internationally.
The Wai O Papa/Waterlands exhibitions are at the Faculty of Architecture and Design, Victoria University of Wellington, 139 Vivian Street, Wellington.