Winner of the Award of Excellence in the 2025 WLA Awards – Concept Public Space category
Te Ara Tukutuku project is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most ambitious landscape regeneration and city-shaping projects of a generation. It will heal a contaminated and reclaimed headland site on the edge of Te Waitematā harbour– rebinding the relationship between whenua (land) and moana (sea).
Through a collaborative co-design process that deeply engages mātauranga Māori (indigenous knowledge) and tīkanga (practices), this 5-hectare site is being transformed from its petrochemical past into a thriving, healthy coastal environment.
The vision for Te Ara Tukutuku is to create a living green open space perched on Te Waitematā harbour, a space to reconnect and rebind the relationship between Tangaroa (the ocean) and Papatūānuku (Mother Earth), connecting our people back to the water. This project symbolically re-establishes a new harbour headland that recalls lost waterfront cultural sites that were removed through colonisation and successive reclamation of the waterfront.
Conceived and developed through a unique partnership that combines representatives of 13 local iwi (indigenous tribes), the client and our design consortium into a collaborative collective ensuring that indigenous landscape and cultural values have been embedded from the outset and upheld through the design process.
Te Ara Tukutuku will deliver the largest new open space in the city centre in 100 years. However, it will be a shift away from conventional public space – including urban and event spaces, a coastal ngahere (forest), outdoor classrooms and pavilions, whare waka and waka ramp (community infrastructure for the storage and launching of traditional canoes), floating and coastal pools for swimming, new green infrastructural systems, marine restoration in action, an on-site nursery, an integrated educational curriculum, an elevated headland, and places to pause and take a breath. This will be a space for everyone.
The design reimagines the original waterfront landscape, shaping a sophisticated topography and coastal edge inspired by the harbours original headlands and bays. It creates a mosaic of marine and terrestrial habitats, open spaces, and experiences—transforming Te Ara Tukutuku into a resilient ecological landscape that reflects deep cultural histories while acting as a catalyst for future city transformation.
The projects 5 key moves – Headland, Coastal Edge, Active Spine, Coastal Loop and Activities – weave layered programs of water, landscape, community and culturally based activity into a cohesive whole. Our approach is informed by the acts of ‘healing’ the site to restore the health of existing and new ecological systems, ‘forming’ new spaces and experiences through topographical and landscape programming and ‘cultivating’ new environmental and social ecologies over time.
Regenerative practice is at the heart of our Te Ara Tukutuku mahi (work). We are taking a holistic approach to the health and wellbeing of whenua (land), moana (ocean), wai (water) and tāngata (people) and how they interconnect. ‘Mauri tū, mauri ora’ epitomises the holistic health and wellbeing for these ecosystems to heal and regenerate together. For one to thrive, the others must too.
Te Ara Tukutuku
Location: Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa | Auckland, New Zealand
Designer Credit: LandLAB + SCAPE
Client: Auckland Council
Collaborators/Other Consultants: Toi Waihanga Design Collective, Auckland Council, Mana Whenua Partners