Tarawera High School

This previously unassuming and underachieving school in a modest mill town hit the headlines in 2016 when a brave new design by RTA studio won one award and raised nomination for several others.

The success of the reinvention of the old, tired, Kawerau High School into fun and fresh Tarawera High School, may well be due the the depth of consideration of the environment by RTA’s designers.

The Bay of Plenty township of Kawerau is seated on the banks of the Tarawera River, and under the mountain named Putauaki, thus owning its position in a traditional Maori fashion. It’s name is taken from the original Chief of the area who may have lived here as early as 1200. Today’s Kawerau is a mill town, a manufactured settlement, it’s fluctuating workforce coming and going since it’s foundation in 1953.

Unfortunately Kawerau College had gone the way of many other small town High Schools with the roll falling away in the wake of enormous truancy and lack of community engagement. Rather than being shut down as many others were, a regeneration plan began, with a new name and architecture as the springboard for new growth.

RTA’s designers drew from the the lines of the landscape, the form of the traditional wharenui, and the school’s variety of teaching needs and practices, including its early adoption of new educational pedagogies.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the new structures is the startling yet sympathetic use of bright highlights on natural materials, and it is this which earned the top award at the Resene Total Colour Awards award 2016. Yet to be decided are two other architecture awards, about which NZ Places will keep you posted.

Time will then be the judge if the teenagers of Kawerau feel the love imbued in their new buildings and return to school for the real, spiritual, rebuild of college and community.