2021 New Zealand Architecture Awards Winner
Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Te Ao Mārama and Cenotaph Galleries
This exemplary project threads a series of bold new architectural elements and integrated artworks through the accumulated layers of the existing Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, transforming it into a cohesive entity fit for its multicultural future. A new entry sequence from the south leads through carved fins into the reconfigured Te Ao Mārama space, which brings new significance to the 2006 tanoa bowl, and creates an epic civic greeting and orientation space within the South Atrium. New spaces and linkages have been elegantly designed to connect rooms and navigate between existing layers of heritage fabric, choreographing visitor flow through the building, as well as telling its story. Rich materiality, local timbers, sculpted forms, and diverse narratives reinforce cultural connections, and strongly ground the building in its unique place in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, and the South Pacific.
