Te Wānanga

An elevated tidal shelf for human and coastal ecologies—Te Wananga creates space for people, flora and fauna to flourish at the interface of city and harbour. Celebrating the landscape, urban, social, environmental and cultural qualities of the people and place of Tāmaki Makaurau. It welcomes visitors with respect, generosity and care, providing a place to pause—to breathe and feel the breath—the hā of Tangaroa.

Located within the Ferry Basin, and funded by the sale of QEII square, it was delivered as part of the wider Downtown Infrastructure Development Programme. The brief was to deliver a memorable public space of equivalent size that reconnected people to the harbour edge and environment.

Underpinned by the programme-wide guiding principles—Auckland to Tāmaki Makaurau, Manaakitanga and Mīharo—this public space design is an expression of the breath of Tangaroa, reinterpreting the lost intertidal zone as a gift to the city, expressing kaitiaki through an evolving relationship between people, time and tide.

Te Wānanga was enabled through the foresight of Auckland Council and Auckland Transport, delivered by Isthmus Group in partnership with Mana Whenua. It is a place that acknowledges the areas working wharf past but turns to look forward with hope to a place of social, cultural, economic and environmental health, wellbeing and abundance. Where the sand shines brightest, where kingfish cruise the headlands and pātiki bask in the shallows, where children play under the watchful eye of elders—a place of mana, a place called Tāmaki Makaurau.