Sustainability woven into site development at Aurere
Sustainability is one of the key themes woven into the design and development of the Kupe Waka Centre, at Aurere in Northland.
Everything starts from ensuring the mana of the site and protecting its iconic status.
We don’t want to overload the site with development, such that the very qualities that make it what it is, are destroyed, says Kupe Waka Centre project manager, Dr Peter Phillips.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the national and international economy has changed the way the Centre will operate.
The lockdown has also allowed the project designers to make sure that what they are planning in terms of the different sources of income, reflects the values of the site.
This includes reducing the numbers of tourists expected on the site (when we open in late 2021) and shifting the balance towards people who visit for education, training and awareness of Kaupapa Waka: waka sailing, waka building, traditional navigation and the lore which enshrines the knowledge and wisdom.
There is a trade off in the number of tourists coming to the KWC site because cultural tourism is another way of spreading the message about kaupapa waka, but Dr Phillips believes they have now got the balance right.
Water conservation measures at Aurere include upgrading the natural ponds on the Kupe Waka Centre site.
The Centre is recovering pond one, ‘Te Hauroto Tuatahi’, which had over the years been lost to overgrowth, and is extending another pond on the site to provide more water storage from the water that flows through the site.
At the moment there is about 45,000 litres of storage for the rainfall from the Whare Wānanga and the carving shed which in an average year receive about 575,000 litres of rainfall.
A new shelter and store at the Whare Waka is also expected to receive another 700,000 litres of rainwater bringing up the total from the various buildings to more than 1.8 million litres. The intention is to capture more of that water and store it in new water tanks to be established on the site, for use on new plantings and gardens.
Sustainable site development for the Kupe Waka Centre will include creating efficient, multi-function buildings.
The Whare Whetu (Star House) will function not only as a place we can share waka trips and training and traditional navigation using virtual reality headsets, but also as a meeting and conference room.
That makes KWC more sustainable because there is less investment in buildings and less maintenance required.
Virtual reality will allow the Centre to show visitors not only celestial navigation, (such as the traditional way- finding route from the Marquesas to Hawai’i, using the Southern Cross), but also activities like waka sailing where visitors will experience sailing on board a waka hourua, a traditional double-hull ocean-going canoe.
The virtual reality headsets will also allow us to teach traditional way-finding to our waka crew members and supporters, says Peter Phillips.
The concept for the Whare Whetu and the use of virtual reality headsets came about when it was realised the roof of a proposed Planetarium would be higher than the nearby Te Kāpehu Whetū (the Star Compass) that sits up on a flat part of the dune.
The proposed Planetarium would have blocked the Star Compass sight-lines to the west. The virtual reality solution is great, as it will allow us to show so much more than celestial navigation.”
The development will also save an extra building by extending the carving shed. This new proposal for what will become the Whare Waka, creates a large cover which will function both as a place to refit the waka and after that, will have other waka on display.
This will allow the Centre to show people all types of waka construction under-cover, sheltered from the weather. All the buildings will be linked by carefully designed, wheelchair-friendly paths and have ramps, as universal access is another important priority for the development. They will also run on solar power with battery backup.
The KWC is about sharing the history and stories that go back to Polynesian migration — across the Pacific and waka hourua arrival in New Zealand — sharing stories of voyaging, sharing skills of waka construction, and teaching traditional navigation.
More recently Sir Hekenui Busby’s two waka hourua sailed to Rapanui and back, a journey of more than 9000 nautical miles (in 2012/13).
This realised a dream of Sir Hek’s that a waka from Aotearoa should sail to the other points of the Polynesian Triangle as ‘Te Aurere’ had sailed to Hawai’i in 1995.
