*A happy WAM team, left to right: Sophie Jacques, Senior Associate and Michael Hawes, Principal with Simon Hardy, Wellington Studio Principal and architect Amelia Aitken.*

For Warren and Mahoney (WAM) landscape architects Michael Hawes and Sophie Jacques the opening of the plaza area of Te Ngākau Civic Square in Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington on Saturday 14 March was a palpable occasion of professional satisfaction.

Walking with them around the site on the Friday beforehand, LAA had an opportunity to witness their attentive eyes for detail flitting back and forth across the completed works, while the high-viz crew from LT McGuinness tended to finishing touches.

Their biggest anticipation and pending excitement was the desire to see it filled with people.

For Michael this project, and its collaboration with mana whenua design lead Tihei, had been an opportunity to rethink what a civic space can give life to - with a determination that a sense of nature and the wellbeing of the whenua would come first over the vestiges of colonialism through narratives of a forest floor.

As attributed to Michael in a news article published by client Wellington City Council Te Ngākau’s water features added an essential “reminder of the former foreshore and intertidal landscape and the natural cycles of tide, rain and evaporation” while also embracing “the power of nature for play and (to) activate the square with movement and sound.”

As well as tackling the significant challenge of activation, Michael told LAA there was a conscious effort to knit all of the elements of this special space together “for everyone” and to enable it to connect back to the adjacent precinct of the inner city.

This was a project that carried a weight of public expectation and civic responsibility, set against a behind-the-scenes backdrop of tough pivots as well as keeping the faith.

While there are still several surrounding pieces of this ‘Wellington puzzle’ to put into place, the result so far has absolutely seen a buzzy enrichment of interactions in an area now liberated to slowly grow into itself, and that now feels laid out with possibilities rather than encumbered with dated typologies.

When Sophie joined WAM around this time last year, she expressed her excitement at stepping into her new role at “such a pivotal moment”.

A fervent Wellingtonian, she doesn’t hesitate to call the memory-making result a “highlight of my career”.

In addition to WAM’s extended team of Michael Hawes, Sophie Jacques, Dominic Newman, Izack Franklin, Bailen Thatcher, Henry Maru Lanning, Sho Kasuya, Simon Hardy, Claire Sharpe, Seth Trocio and Savannah Hunt, other collaborators on this project were:

Tihei - Rangi Kipa, Phillip Kelly, Emily Daley
Ripple Resilience - Amy MacDonald
Place Creative - Anna Harley
Aurecon - Civil, Structural, M&E, Lighting, Surveying
RLB - QS
RCP - Project managers
LT McGuinness - Main and ECI contractor

A journey to be proud of: Te Ngākau Civic Square