The Community-Led Design Group is delighted to congratulate LandLAB on their GOLD award for Te Rimutahi in the Repurposed Spaces/ Adaptive Reuse category at the Best Design Awards, announced on Friday 9th October 2026. The Community-Led Design Group is thrilled to be named as a Kaitautoko / Contributor to this brilliant project. All the long, hard years of advocacy work were worth it.
Judge’s comments:
Te Rimutahi shows how genuine co-authorship with mana whenua and community can turn a former drive-through bottle store into a thriving civic landscape, embedding cultural narrative and mātauranga Māori into every layer of adaptive reuse and ecological design. The project delivers outsized environmental and social performance, offering a compelling new model for resilient, community-led public space in Auckland.
Description:
Te Rimutahi transforms a former industrial site in Ponsonby, Auckland into a hybrid civic landscape where adaptive reuse, ecological infrastructure and community life are seamlessly integrated. Reimagining a former drive-through bottle store as part plaza, part park and part cultural platform, the project demonstrates how underutilised urban sites can become catalysts for social connection, environmental performance and neighbourhood identity.
Emerging from a community-led advocacy initiative, the project was shaped through extensive public engagement and close collaboration with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāti Te Ata Waiohua and artist Graham Tipene. This process moved beyond traditional consultation toward genuine co-authorship, embedding cultural narratives, memory and mātauranga Māori within the structure and experience of the landscape. Te Rimutahi references the lone rimu tree once located along this significant ridgeline, grounding the project in whenua, movement and occupation.
At its core, the project is organised through a sequence of interconnected civic ‘rooms’ that mediate between street edge, canopy and planted landscape. Adaptive reuse is central to the project’s identity and sustainability performance, with existing structures transformed into flexible civic infrastructure supporting markets, performances, recreation and everyday occupation. A lush and immersive planting strategy draws from local ecological associations and coastal ridgeline conditions, combining indigenous and complementary exotic species to create a resilient urban ecology.
Environmental performance is embedded throughout through water harvesting, renewable energy generation, adaptive reuse and integrated green infrastructure. Despite its modest footprint, Te Rimutahi has become a highly active neighbourhood destination and establishes a new model for resilient, community-led urban public space in Auckland.
2026 Repurposed Spaces/ Adaptive Reuse
- Pou Auaha / Creative Director: Henry Crothers
- Pou Taketake / Cultural Leads: Bela Hinemoa Grimsdale, Graham Tipene
- Ringatoi Matua / Design Directors: Sam Gould, Jeremy Thompson
- Kaitautoko / Contributors: Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāti Te Ata Waiohua, 254 Ponsonby Community Led Design Group, Beca Civil, Structural, Lighting
- Client: Auckland Council
https://bestawards.co.nz/spatial/repurposed-spaces-adaptive-reuse/landlab/te-rimutahi
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