Lessons learnt | Architecture Now

The arrival of Tukutuku establishes a new heart for AUT’s campus on Auckland’s North Shore and marks the completion of a series of major transformational projects across the university’s three main campuses. Preceded by the Sir Paul Reeves Building at the city campus, and the Mana Hauora building in South Auckland, Tukutuku is not a stand-alone statement building. Rather, it represents a continuum of sustained research into low-carbon building practices, a long-term view towards master-planning and capital expenditure, and the social possibilities of a distributed campus model.

The result is a building that can be evaluated for its architectural qualities in the here and now, set against the ongoing evolution of the North Campus and AUT’s stated aim of being a university “for the changing world”. To find an appropriate architectural expression for a university that is overtly conscious of new and evolving careers requires a deft hand and collaborative spirit. The outcome reflects all the benefits, and some of the limitations, of Jasmax and AUT’s long-term relationship and accumulated research.

The roles and responsibilities to which Tukutuku responds are varied and complex. The building establishes a heart within a campus which lacked one — giving definition to its context and pointing the way forward for future development. Formerly the Auckland Technical Institute’s (ATI) Teachers’ Training College, the North Campus has evolved from an ad-hoc series of buildings to now offering the bulk of AUT’s Health and Environmental Sciences and its School of Education.

The atmosphere on campus is distinct from the intensity of its city counterpart. While the grounds are leafy, green and expansive, the busy roads and motorways bordering it create the sense of a self-contained island. The ambition to overcome this sense of containment has reportedly improved student and staff experience, retaining these populations on site through a series of moves that scale from the interpersonal, to engagement with industry, and to significant landforms beyond the site. Tukutuku’s catalysing role in the campus gaining coherency is keenly felt.

As a new campus heart, the building takes on a general quality. It is an approximately 9000m² learning and teaching facility, consisting of both refurbished and new floor space that is roughly allocated in thirds for staff, student and social use. This ratio creates a relaxed proportion to the interior, as major circulation axes offer plenty of opportunity to stop, study or gather in small groups. Strategically located between existing buildings with good bones, Tukutuku makes good on the name it was gifted by Ngāti Pāoa.

The woven panelling of this art form is expressed through a building whose core structure draws together these disparate structures into a unified whole.

Approaching the building through the Jasmax-designed landscape, Tukutuku resolves the fact that its most public elevation is west-facing through a largely closed, sawtooth wall that hovers above a low, glazed base. The façade alternates between a staggered, weaving rhythm of aluminium panels and portrait windows to the plaza. The effect gives fleeting moments of reciprocal exchange with the inside and offers a composed backdrop to the heart of the campus. A pervasive sense of restraint prioritises environmental performance over grand gestures on this elevation, including a quiet entry that draws foot traffic in through a low colonnade to a lofty atrium.

Arriving at the atrium provides a moment to appreciate where the interface between existing and new has been skilfully resolved. The adaptive reuse of the AF tower accommodates much of the teaching faculty and forms the backdrop to the eastern face of the atrium. A series of projecting stairs and bridges negotiates level differences between old and new floor plates, while the external structure of the tower slips behind a projecting planted balcony, reducing its visual scale and backgrounding it against the confidently expressed, mass-timber grid that marches along the major axis. Elsewhere in the atrium, a café and various open furniture settings draw students and staff out from the edges, while student services are arranged in a gradient of privacy, depending on the sensitivity of conversations being had.

The journey past student services that completes the east-west pedestrian spine culminates at the AF lecture theatres and feels distinctly back-of-house when compared to the clarity of the north-south spine. Where the transition back to a low-ceilinged passage towards the lecture theatres could have been alleviated through greater formal clarity and boldness in material choices, the atrium-height glazing, large, terraced social staircase and bridge through to the library make for a consistently memorable journey in the opposing direction.

The varying quality of these edges do not diminish the atrium’s position at Tukutuku’s social heart and its natural location for exchange with industry. Tukutuku’s role to provide a physical interface with both public and industry events reflects a core principle of AUT’s outward-looking culture and operations. While the blending of industry and academy maintains AUT’s position as a relevant and future-oriented institution, it does raise architectural questions on the fundamental differences between modern university and office buildings. Many of the tropes found here, including the social stair, ground-floor café, flexible raised access floors and workplace design are interchangeable with many contemporary commercial buildings. It is, perhaps, this nod to commerce that subdues the expressive potential, sense of place and sense of discovery that the narrative accompanying this building claims.

Metaphors drawn from nature state the qualities of this coastal campus and are expressed through a ‘forest’ of columns, while the bays set within the column grids are imagined as ‘garden rooms’ or ‘glades’. The regularity of the structural grid would require more varied and episodic use of secondary timbers to bring this idea to life, while the soft furnishings, carpet selections and furniture are too commercial for the atmospheric qualities of a garden room to be apparent.

Tukutuku regains a convincing posture in the bridges that connect across the atrium and beyond the social stair to the library, whose refurbishment will form the next phase of campus works. As a connector, the bridges expose views of buildings that were never conceived in the round. Whether intentional or not, the result presents the backside of the campus in equal measure to the conventionally picturesque views of the landscape beyond. These moments are reminders of how much Tukutuku has achieved, and the transformations that it will continue to stimulate across campus. The bridge to the library is the strongest gesture. It is perfectly proportioned to accommodate both passage through and contemplative study overlooking the campus-heart landscape. As the journey quiets from the sociability of the atrium, the presence of books and an outlook to the coastal edge provide a fitting end point to a well-considered pedestrian spine.

Behind the physical and operational experience of Tukutuku is a team which has consistently and collaboratively refined its approach to environmental and educational design. Jasmax’s project director, Chris Scott, embodies the practice’s long-term commitment to lifting educational attainment through buildings that encourage occupation before, during and after classes. As a result, Tukutuku should be evaluated by looking backwards through the practice’s lineage of education projects and forward to the aspiration of achieving net zero carbon design by 2030.

The granular resolution of these ideas was made possible by the establishment of a site office, shared by key consultants for three days each week. This, combined with a protracted planning and design period through Covid, aided in the rigorous testing that many aspects of the project received. The post-tensioned timber structure, necessitated by poor ground conditions, avoided the costly exercise of deep concrete piles, while floor-to-floor depths, the detailing of seismic joints between buildings and the mechanical ventilation system were heavily workshopped. On the client side, dedicated timetabling analysis and learning from past projects halved the space required, allowing the overall footprint to reduce and the building to be used more intensively as a result.

Tukutuku, in both physical experience and design process, is less of a propositional statement and more part of an assured and skilful evolution. While the lessons learnt from Jasmax’s built lineage and in-house research are on full display, a more emphatic sense of authorship may have elevated the expression of its core ideas and critical role as the campus heart. Regardless, the team that delivered this building is passionate and well-researched about the measurable benefits Tukutuku brings to the North Campus. With such a future-oriented university, the scene is now set for the campus to evolve with the renewed optimism that Tukutuku represents.

Join the Urban Development Institute of New Zealand and member Jasmax for an engaging discussion on the sustainable design principles behind Tukutuku here.