Description:

Waimahara, a digitally interactive environment, was developed as a new public artwork adjacent to Myers Park in Auckland’s CBD. Through sculptural form, light and sound, the artwork has transformed a hostile and unwelcoming inner-city underpass into a luminous environment that offers manaaki to all, inviting those who pass to linger, wonder, and engage – no matter the time of night or day. Waimahara’s cyclic audio and light programming creates a fluctuating experience, with the artwork being responsive to changing weather, and the presence of manuhiri (visitors), delivering a modulated, site- and moment-specific designed experience.
The project’s kaupapa focused on three dimensions: manaakitanga – making a place that welcomed everybody; honouring wai – water-centred Indigenous cultural perspectives and sustainability; and nurturing tikanga – encouraging the learning and performance of waiata to create a deep sensory (rongo) experience of place.
One Māori creative served as kaiurungi (lead designer), holding and shaping the project kaupapa, guiding the creative development of the Waimahara concept, and onboarding mana whenua Māori ringatoi expertise throughout the project. The kaiurungi and the team of mana whenua Māori creatives worked in partnership and collaboration with a client representative, and a broader team of designers, fabricators and digital programmers, in leading the design development of this complex and multi-sensory public-space environment.
Waimahara conjures an experience of water flowing through a forested valley, with the underpass ceiling festooned with suspended hinaki-themed forms, holding illuminated tuna and curving blue-green nets of Kaynemaile architectural fabric. A comprehensive array of programmable lights and speakers soak the visitor in an audiovisual atmosphere: audio compositions constituted from audible worlds of manu, wai and taonga pūoro evoke a forest in this “urban jungle” site. Two specially composed waiata – Waimahara and Waiora – evoke the physical, emotional, spiritual and cultural significance of water for Māori; the composers’ lyrics speak of how knowledge of the world’s creation was stored, with intention, by atua (gods) within the essence of water. With the human body constituted largely by water, memories of this creation knowledge could be safeguarded, and never lost to humankind.
Waimahara is interactive and responsive. The waiata are designed to be learned onsite, or through QR code-linked access to waiata-learning videos (support website). Manuhiri who learn and perform the waiata into a sculptural sensor will, at the correct pitch and rhythm, can unlock a much fuller music and light accompaniment, than that experienced without this interactive engagement. Those who participate are rewarded.
The artwork also serves as a programmable performance environment – in the future, new creative projects will be developed for Waimahara.
Waimahara describes the memory of water, and specifically of Te Waihorotiu, the stream that is now “imprisoned” in a pipe, and flows beneath the underpass site and down to the Waitematā Harbour. Like that awa, the artwork is alive. Here, the mana whenua Māori artist team have created a multi-sensory taonga toi experience, where through the wānanga of waiata and interactive participation, manuhiri can deepen their connection and sense of belonging in this place.