Culture and collegiality

John Walsh visits Te Rangihīroa, the University of Otago’s new hall of residence designed by Jasmax, and finds a big building with much to say about student welfare and the university’s engagement with te ao Māori.

Photography JASMAX / XANDER DIXON

TE RANGIHĪROA IS THE FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT college at New Zealand’s most collegiate university since the Ted McCoy-designed UniCol opened in 1969. If its novelty makes it notable, its size makes it significant. The $104-million building, more than 14,000 square metres in area, houses 450 University of Otago students in two conjoined six-floor blocks, five minutes’ walk from the main campus. This part of north Dunedin already had some hefty buildings: the Gregg’s factory, Forsyth Barr Stadium and the former dairy factory that, since 1998, has housed the Hocken Library. Even so, Te Rangihīroa stands out as a Gulliver in the Lilliput of its immediate, two-storey neighbourhood. (Urban design was not part of the brief.) It unequivocally advertises the importance to Dunedin of the country’s oldest university, an institution to which…

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Architecture NZ (Digital) - 1 Issue, March-April 2024

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