Top award for childcare centre

Te Mirumiru staff and whanau celebrate the building's international success. Photo / Peter De Graff

A ground-breaking building in Kawakawa designed to tell the stories of its iwi and be as energy efficient as possible has won a major international award.

Te Mirumiru childcare centre beat 57 other entries from around the Asia-Pacific to win the top honour at the World Green Building Council's awards in Singapore last week.

The bilingual childcare centre, which is owned by the Ngati Hine Health Trust and provides early education to 70 children aged 0-5, was the only Australasian building to make the final eight. The win puts Northland on the global green building map. Te Mirumiru, which opened in 2012 at a cost of $2.2 million, had previously been shortlisted for a number of international awards.

Te Mirumiru has won an international green building award. PHOTO/SIMON DEVITT

Team leader Arona Tipene said the win had given staff, Ngati Hine and the wider Kawakawa community a great sense of pride. It had also put Ngati Hine tupuna (ancestors) on an international stage because the building was inspired by the nearby caves at Waiomio and the tribe's eponymous ancestor Hineamaru.

Ms Tipene said Te Mirumiru's aim was to look after children and build them into leaders of tomorrow.

"This award will open up all sorts of opportunities and possibilities for them."

Alex Cutler, the head of New Zealand's Green Building Council, said the award was a "stunning achievement".

"These awards are hotly contested. New Zealand's design and construction industry can hold its head high among the world's very best. Te Mirumiru was up against a wide international field and has shone through. This is testament to the strong vision of its iwi owners, and the technical skill of the architect and project team," he said.

World Green Building Council chief executive Jane Henley said Te Mirumiru was an outstanding example of a building that engaged and educated children about their culture, customs and the environment.

Te Mirumiru was designed by Phil Smith of Casa Architects in Auckland to reflect Ngati Hine's culture and values. He wanted to create a genuinely Maori building rather than the usual Western building overlaid with Maori carvings. New Zealand's first commercial earth-bank building, it is built into a grass-covered, crescent-shaped mound of earth and is one of only three buildings in New Zealand to achieve a 6 Green Star rating and the only Green Star-rated early childhood centre in Australasia.

Its symbolism includes the earth bank's womb-like shape with the building formed inside, like a child of Papatuanuku (the Earth Mother). A cut in the north facade, its only entrance, represents the caesarean birth through which Ngati Hine trace their lineage (about 600 years ago ancestor Hineamaru is said to be the first Maori woman to deliver a child by caesarean section and survive).