Description:

Ngā Pakiaka is an interactive experience within Auckland Art Gallery where children and their whānau explore art and interconnected environmental themes through making and exploration.

With a lifespan of 2 years, the exhibition resets every 6 months with core themes of land, children of Tāne, people and shelter. These themes are underpinned with messages of creative expression, sustainability and care for our environment, interconnection from a te ao Māori perspective and finally kaitiakitanga.

Each sub-theme has the same core infrastructure with pegboards, making tables, and reading environments but with unique materials, messages, graphics and activities to keep the space feeling natural, environmentally friendly and an ongoing creative ecosystem.

The conceptual idea for Ngā Pakiaka was to create a space that is linked and takes inspiration from the natural world but creates a moment of surprise and delight within the larger gallery context. There was a desire to create an environment that feels like it still has a link to contemporary art and design but also combines playful elements through colour, graphics, materials and structures.

The main idea was to look at flora and fauna under the light of Marama, the moon, rather than daylight which gave the ability to create a darker space that pulled focus to the activities, graphics and even the view to the outside world rather than the existing architecture.

Colour plays a large key role not only for the exhibition environment physically but also for printed external material and digital assets within the Gallery and online. The entire space including the ceiling was wrapped in blue and let a darker tone inform the tree silhouettes, native creatures and text that appears.

The main physical material used was the Cleanstone recycled plastic sheet from Critical. Kererū was used for the main tree structure and activity table inlays, which is made from consumer packaging and ocean plastics, and Milky for the four large pegboards that flank the space. This material was complemented by rich orange upholstery, Autex acoustic panelling and small hints of timber.

The four pegboards are over two metres in diameter and allow for multiple visitors to interact on each surface, bringing families together. These pegboards are the main architectural feature on the walls and take inspiration from the moon rising from the horizon and up above the ceiling into line. They are fabricated to be adaptable for different activities across the iterations. Critical is also used to create the central tree that wraps around an existing structural column. This structure is completely assembled using no glue but rather employs small timber dowels that are used to tie flat elements together.

Sustainability was the main driver for production. All of the plastic sheet structures can be disassembled and transported back to the supplier and put into the recycling system, with the gallery receiving a partial refund on their initial outlay. Paint was used for all of the trees rather than vinyl, the flooring can be reused, and existing in-house furniture was reupholstered rather than purchasing new.