Ferry Basin

We live in Tāmaki Makaurau. Referred to by Ngāti Whātua as Tāmaki kainga ika me ngā wheua katoa – Tāmaki, the place where succulent fish is offered and then eaten bones and all – a measure of manaakitanga and mana provided by the region’s desirability and abundance. It is within this context, on land reclaimed from the bay where the Waihorotiu joined the sea that we define this project. It is here where kingfish cruised the headland and where the pātiki would lie on the mudflats below the shoreline in the warm shallows of the Waitematā. Here at the water’s edge is where we welcome and host our visitors, where people arrive and depart by sea. It is where we as the people of Tāmaki gather for celebration and ceremony, and the mana of Tāmaki and its people is displayed through manaakitanga. Now a defined edge, a fixed line between land and sea – the ferry basin site remains in flux through the ebb and flow of the tide and people.

The Ferry Basin public space project aims to interpose and reinterpret the lost intertidal zone as a gift to the city, giving mana and expressing kaitiaki through an evolving relationship between people, time and tide. A elevated tidal shelf for human and coastal ecology. A layered form containing a series of apertures extends out across the water, open to the sea below creating dynamic interaction with the harbour, and habitat for marine and coastal ecologies.