Modesty and verve | Architecture Now

The Kāpiti Coast District spans Paekākāriki, Paraparaumu, Waikanae and Ōtaki with an architectural historical past that runs deep. Mahara means reminiscence or pondering deeply. The title has lengthy connections to Te Āti Awa, Taranaki and a home at Parihaka supported by Wiremu Te Kākākura Parata within the Eighteen Eighties;1 it was additionally the title of Hemi Matenga and Hira Parata’s Waikanae Visitor Home through the early twentieth century, described as “the satisfaction and pleasure of Waikanae”.2 The title Mahara Place continues as a laneway and open mall courtyard of the Waikanae suburban city centre, a landscaped house redeveloped by Boffa Miskell and crew in 2019. Mahara Place additionally threads via to Whakarongotai Marae on the south and the brand new Toi Mahara artwork gallery on the northern nook of the mall courtyard.

Since 1996, Toi Mahara gallery has had the great fortune to occupy a strong, understated Invoice Allington-designed constructing, initially the Waikanae Library and public bathrooms in 1976. The gallery constructing has all the time had a robust city presence, being nicely sited with “nice bones’’.3 Its restrained blockwork, in-situ concrete beams and brown tile roof contrasted with the retail neighbourhood, giving a welcome sense of the civic in a light-weight architectural milieu. Allington’s design had a robust structural order and a skeletal rhythm shaped by double blockwork columns and metal roof beams. Its easy formal logic remained clearly evident regardless of a sequence of additives over time, together with a mezzanine ground alongside one aspect. The inside house contrasted with the outside. Coronary heart rimu-lined coffered ceilings and a robust, easy spatial character have been simply understood and had tailored nicely to altering calls for over time. It was heat and welcoming, like the within of a protecting jewelry field.

Toi Mahara is a boutique artwork gallery with roots deep in area people arts and crafts teams. It curates historical past exhibitions as nicely, reflecting a depth of regionally grounded content material. For instance, the brand new gallery opening reveals included up to date works by Elisabeth Vullings from Te Horo’s The Kilns Mission and Wiriwhiria, with historic works by the Ōtaki Weavers Collective. The gallery advantages from the curation of Janet Bayly and an inclusive and collective sensibility tuned to the variety of the neighborhood. Toi Mahara additionally holds the Subject Assortment, an traditionally important set of Frances Hodgkins items and related works. These taonga have been a key motivation for the gallery redevelopment by the Mahara Gallery Belief, the Subject Assortment Belief and the Kāpiti Coast District Council.

The gallery redevelopment occurred via an invited architectural competitors, received by a crew from Athfield Architects. The successful design revered the worth of the unique constructing and in some way mixed modesty and verve to create a robust new identification and considerably adapt the gallery constructing for the subsequent generations.

Sustainable remaking of present structure requires confidence and humility from its architects. They have to work with what exists and restore, edit, add to and recreate it with out shedding its essence or making a monster. On this case, new architectural rhythms and patterns happen from the framework of the earlier composition within the method of a jazz improvisation.

For Toi Mahara, the brand new work enters a good looking dialogue with the unique that’s respectful but important. It’s structured by a brand new formal idea: the sentinels, two vertical skyward-facing varieties that reply to and visually reference the most important panorama components of the district — Kāpiti Island and the Tararua Vary. They’re situated on diagonal corners of the unique hip roof construction; this key concept additionally permits the spatial and formal logic of the unique constructing to stay legible inside a robust new design.

The design is hyper-efficient and tiny compared to different galleries for similar-sized native authorities. This was a key a part of its design problem — the general constructing space is modestly elevated with extra first-floor space added on two sides of a now-centralised mezzanine ground. All areas need to work onerous with a number of overlapping features. This begins with the reception/retail/neighborhood house that additionally acts as exhibition, training and hospitality house throughout openings. The most important gallery, Te Manawa Toi Coastlands Gallery, can be a ground-floor neighborhood arts-focused facility. It’s sensitively recrafted, with its quantity restored and delivered to life, full with coffered ceilings and an operable visible connection to Mahara Place.

On the primary ground, there are two new smallish black-box exhibition galleries. Ringa Toi Artists’ Gallery has a glimpse to Kāpiti Island via an operable slot window seat, and entry can be given to the employees/shared workroom. Subsequent door is Toanga Tuku Iho Heritage Gallery. It accommodates exhibitions from the Subject Assortment and travelling exhibitions. This gallery is, in flip, visually related to a small assortment retailer, Te Kohinga. Linking the upstairs areas is the now-folding mezzanine stair, reconceived with new peak and skylights above, an adjoining elevate and a brand new balcony/touchdown with glimpses into the employees/workroom and assortment retailer and overlooking the principle gallery under. This key second within the expertise of the gallery celebrates the renewed constructing as a complete with its augmented readability and simplicity.

The inside structure design, led by Kim Salt, is restrained and chic in its realisation, integrating previous and new materials and color seamlessly, with an understated high quality end and a few hidden splashes of color that reveal themselves over time.

Again-of-house features are unseen however important. Workshop and workroom features and loos are nicely deliberate and interconnected. The plant room above is on the coronary heart of an financial answer, making a progressive sequence of space-conditioning requirements, tailor-made to the wants of every space and recycling the air from one house to a different. It’s described as onion-like in its traits,4 from climate-controlled environments for the gathering storage shifting, sequentially, via the sequence of gallery areas, every with less-demanding and less-expensive conditioning necessities, and ending with the biggest neighborhood gallery house. This answer not solely reduces mechanical plant and plant-room prices, it additionally reduces operating prices.

From an city perspective, an expressive double-height cover on the nook of Mahara Place creates a incredible new civic-scale entrance to the gallery and the central mall courtyard. Throughout the cover, first-floor horizontal GRC panels, with fluting impressed by the potter’s craft, are harking back to the ephemeral morning mist over Kāpiti Island and the Tararua Vary. These components categorical a particular new visible identification for the gallery. Toi Mahara not solely recreates the gallery, it recrafts its city edges, linking to a laneway on the service aspect, activating the northern fringe of the gallery constructing and making a panorama gathering house close to the brand new important entrance on Mahara Place, all built-in seamlessly with the present panorama.

The stress between exterior visible connection and gallery wall house is resolved in favour of neighborhood entry and what a distinction it makes. Even disregarding the opening weekend pleasure, the customer numbers to the gallery have doubled. A number of artist collaborations have additionally been important. Instrumental are artist Tracey Morgan’s stunning graphic works on the brand new gentle, vivid glass canopies; these forged intriguing shadows onto the gallery partitions all through the day. The sentinel formal expression additionally took on one other life. This occurred via the extraordinary work of Catherine Griffiths: a wise new graphic identification for the gallery, which provides one other layer to the constructing significance.

Toi Mahara actually has come of age, remembering its roots, standing its floor and re-imaging a visionary future. It’s memorable structure worthy of its title.

References

1. Queenie Rikihana-Hyland, Kuia Te Āti Awa, talking at Whakarongotai Marae, 17 October 2013.2. Chris Maclean, Kāpiti. Wellington: Whitcombe Press, 1999, p. 100.3. Nick Mouat, interview with the creator, 5 April 2024.4. 335 Constructing Techniques Engineering.