Rotorua Police Station

A police station is at the heart of the community; it houses the men and women on the front line protecting our people. While the police station has long been associated with keeping the peace and justice, the same can’t be said for its connection with cutting edge architecture.

Not anymore. Determined to create a building that reflected the community and it’s history, Leuschke Group Architects created something both beautiful and functional.

As Colin Leuschke of Leuschke Group Architects explains: “It’s a building that could belong nowhere else than Rotorua, Aotearoa. We wanted to make a clear distinction that we would not be constructing a European style building and then putting a few Māori carvings on the lawn. We wanted to engage the local community and iwi and embrace the tradition of Māori architecture in a contemporary way. Māori architecture is anthropomorphic which means, just like a human body, the spine is the ridge beam, the ribs are rafters; it is a living organism and we wanted the building reflect this.”

The local iwi (Te Arawa) were consulted throughout the design and building process and this is evident in the final building. From its 84-meter-long screen that gives the police station its identifiable profile to the palisade-like vertical beams that guard the building.
 
The architects originally took inspiration for the shape of the screen from various forms of Taonga (treasured things). When the initial drafts of the building were presented to the iwi representatives however, it was their identification of the shape as belonging to a Korowai, the Māori Ceremonial cloak that was the most compelling. Just as a Korowai drapes and protects its wearer, so too the screen drapes and protects the building, just as in turn, the Police protect the community.

Famed Māori artist and master carver Lyonel Grant was able to weave Te Arawa’s mythology into this contemporary, laser cut, powder coated, aluminum Korowai.
 
The result is an incredible police station built with the help of the community, for the community. With the adoption of modern materials and construction techniques such as digitally controlled cutting, the overall cost of the building is still incredibly similar to that of other Police buildings recently constructed around New Zealand. Just as the Kaitiaki design is unique to Te Arawa, so too is the new Police station unique to Rotorua.