There’s been a lot of chat about the Hundertwasser Museum since it opened 18 months ago. The building, on the banks of the Hatea River, is something of a calling card for Aotearoa’s northern-most city: you catch glimpses of it from all over town, its tiled turrets and sheer bulk a delightfully quirky addition to the riverfront. 

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The museum also includes the Wairau Māori Art Gallery, the country’s first dedicated Māori contemporary art space – and you really should make time to visit Lisa Reihana’s haunting work, He Wai Ngunguru, Nomads of the Sea, which is on until November. (You should also make time for a shawarma at the Fat Camel, still some of the best Israeli food in the country.)

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And yet, elsewhere in the city’s CBD, change is finally afoot in a town that has never quite lived up to its promise, as talented locals return home to make change. There’s much to like about Whangārei: we check in on three recent projects. 

I.

“This is something I’ve dreamed of doing since I worked at the Dowse,” says Az James of Collecte, her beautiful new shop in downtown Whangārei which sells a mixture of objects and New Zealand fashion. “It needed the right time and the right place – I could never have done it in Wellington or Auckland.” 

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At the end of 2021, James and husband Jeff Brown moved from an apartment in Wellington to four hectares of bush looking out over the Whangārei Heads and sold their Newtown warehouse, which housed their experiential design business Workshop e. “We’d been working for a couple of summers on the museum at Waitangi,” recalls James, who was born in Whangārei, “and we went back to Wellington and thought: What’s holding us here?” Whangārei appealed because it was city sized, but close to the beach and the bush – and they could see the impact the Hundertwasser Museum, at that point a couple of months off opening, would have. 

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A year later, James opened Collecte, a beautiful shop selling a careful selection of clothes by New Zealand designers. You’ll find the store on Walton Street in the city’s CBD, just outside the main shopping district, in a rehabilitated industrial building that James and Brown bought not long after moving. After a nine-month renovation that stripped the building back to its bones and added a minimalist, white fitout, featuring a wall of fabric in the entrance that screens the Workshop e office from the street. “It had to be things I loved,” says James of what she sells. “There’s no point in having things in here just because I think they might sell – it’s about slowing things right down.” 

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The building is split in four, housing the various James-Brown endeavours. There’s Collecte, the public face, and an airy office for Workshop e, which designs and builds exhibitions and visitor attractions for galleries and museums, and has staff all over New Zealand after packing up in Wellington. (“I just said, we’re going to work in Northland and you can live wherever you like,” says James.) Out the back, daughter Meghan James-Brown runs her highly desired label James Brown – known for her beautifully tailored coats – from an airy workroom running out to a side alley; and in the final quarter Jeff Brown has finally returned to painting in a purpose-designed studio. 

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“It feels like people are discovering us,” says James, “and a lot of them tell us they can’t believe this is in Whangārei. And I think, well, this is a growing city now – you deserve it.”

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II.

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Down the street, a couple of other transplants from Newtown opened Local Talent, an all-comers tavern, earlier this year. Matt Hawkes was born here, but started the cult wine bar Mason on a side street in a tiny space in Newtown in 2019; partner Sophie Evans used to work for Coffee Supreme. They moved north last year, seeking a slower pace of life – warmer weather, more surfing, and the chance to buy their “dream house”.

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Starting a restaurant wasn’t always part of the plan, but it didn’t take long for the couple to spot the opportunity and, after a brief holiday, they signed a lease on a defunct cafe not far from the city’s police station (neighbours include The Cell Block backpackers and the Piggery second-hand bookshop – wisely, they chose not to continue the theme). “I said to a friend the other day I wish we had more time,” says Hawkes, “because there’s so much we could do here. The thing about Whangārei is the opportunity.” 

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When they took over the space, an advisor told them there weren’t enough of the right people in town: Evans just told him to check out the Whangārei Farmers Market on a Saturday. Even so, Local Talent welcomes every kind of Whangārei local: on a Friday afternoon you’ll find well-to-do women drinking rosé alongside tradies playing pool, while holidaying Aucklanders are known to drop by for lunch or dinner. 

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The food is generous and tasty: Hawkes describes it as “greekish” rather than Greek. “We wanted to do elevated pub food and it was a toss-up between Mexican and Greek,” says Evans. “Then we saw meat on a skewer [on a holiday in Greece] and it kind of went from there.” As Hawkes notes, Greek food can be elevated or rustic, but it’s always fresh. At Local Talent, you can get a “smoked bifteki brisket burger” or a spiced organic chicken thigh souvlaki, but you can also choose from a selection of smaller plates including a thoroughly wonderful plate of snapper sashimi with Zuni onion, pickled radish and seaweed crème fraîche. I can also report the dolmades are a thing of great beauty. 

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The space is simple, with a high stud, big windows and booths built from plywood that Hawkes and his dad built themselves. It’s airy, and casual, with a peach-and-white chequered floor and a kind of dinery vibe. There’s no table service: you order at the bar. “We liked that taverna idea,” says Hawkes. “A big open space where people can drop in.” 

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III.

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Whangārei’s new civic centre opened in June, a $59-million project designed by Kerry Avery of Team Architects. The building is light and airy, four storeys of open-plan space with views over the harbour and to the hills, arranged around a central atrium. 

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It’s called Te Iwitahi, named after a tūpuna of both Te Parawhau and Ngāti Kahu o Torongare, the mana whenua of what is now central Whangārei. I visited in late July with Jade Kake and Hope Pūriri, of Matakohe Architecture + Urbanism, who acted as cultural advisors. The site is important for Māori: it sits between two former pā in the city, Kauika pā in the western hills, and Pihoi pā downtown; connecting the two is an ancient pathway, currently known as Lovers Lane but which will soon be known as Te Ara Hikoi ki Kauika.

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The problems with the council’s two former buildings were many and manifest, but for local Māori, there was an additional issue. “There was nothing to connect with where we are in the world, and hapū identity,” says Kake. “So even beyond the challenges of the space being fit for purpose, the council chambers had a strongly colonial feel.”

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Matakohe was brought in at concept stage, initially to advise on the cultural impact and then to help ground the building in local tradition. Avery had already made key moves, including adding a “ceremonial space” separate to the main chambers. “From a hapū perspective, it was important that everybody was treated as equal in this space,” says Pūriri, “before going into the [council chamber]. For hapū, there are still a lot of challenges between tangata whenua and tangata tiriti – they saw the chamber as a challenging space to have our tikanga in.” 

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Kake and Pūriri formed a rōpū kaumatua from the hapū to advise on cultural narratives that were appropriate for integration into the building. They saw some structural changes – the moving of food-preparation areas from above the ceremonial area, and the inclusion of a meeting room with 24-hour access for hapū needing a place to gather.

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There are subtle motifs and nods to traditional designs. Each level has a different theme relating to traditional stories; the underside of the soffit features a red-and-white pattern reminiscent of – but not mimicking – tukutuku panels. “People go looking for the symbols and motifs,” says Kake, “but it’s more about how it sits in the landscape – and how it works from a tikanga perspective.” 

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