THEIR PLACE RAUKURA TUREI
Artist, architect and māmā Raukura Turei loves living centrally, and in community, at Cohaus, the communal housing development in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Turei (Ngāitai ki Tāmaki, Ngā Rauru Kītahi) lives with her partner, Mokonuiarangi, and daughter, Hinauri
RAUKURA: Our whānau’s fortunate enough to live at Cohaus, which is in effect a community of like-minded people who, in their choice to be part of a collective construction, wanted to join resources, expertise, and what pūtea (money) they had to build a community with a lighter footprint on the earth, all while living centrally.
There are 19 new apartments in two separate buildings, and the original villa that sat on the street – once a birthing centre for unwed mothers – remains as a single residence.
I’d owned a house in New Lynn with my ex-partner and I wanted to put that equity into something. The thought of buying a house of my own was daunting.
I love the community, the fact it’s Grey Lynn where I grew up, close to Māmā still, and it was a way to afford to live back in a very gentrified Grey Lynn as it is today.
In my whare is also my partner Moko, and Hinauri, who’s 3. Moko and I have been together for five years and I signed up to Cohaus six years ago, so it’s been a really long collective process.
It was really nice not having to do the architectural work. We were informed all the way through, and it felt like we were in good hands.
We got to play a role with the architects’ final layout of our unit and the final interior. We chose tiles, cabinetry, and added little bits such as a skylight in the living room.
All the units wrap around a central garden, and a little common house where we host birthdays. There’s a flourishing productive māra kai (food garden) and those who are interested in gardening put in as much as they have.
Because I’m stretched between architectural work, painting work and parenting, I feel the benefit of many hands.
I’ve made a conscious effort to not work from home. I have designated spaces for my mahi. I work at Monk Mackenzie, where I’m a principal four days a week. I’m leading a few papakāinga (ancestral home) projects at the moment – collective housing for and by tangata whenua.
That office is on Quay St, on the waterfront downtown. And then I have a painting studio at the train station in Parnell. I’m no longer attached to a single gallery, but I have had shows, one with Bartley and Company Art in Wellington, and one that just opened in Sydney.
This mahi is my space of immediate creative expression where I don’t have to answer to anybody else. It fuels my own need to both just get ideas onto paper or linen as I work, without having to conform to the many parameters that architecture has.
It’s a sacred space, my own place to process grief, and connect with stories of whānau members // such as my kuia, my father’s mother. It’s also a space to connect to whānau and to cultural practice in the way I harvest soils and clays and sands to use in my painting.
The painting has fed into the architecture in that it’s given me more confidence to lean into my taha Māori: Projects that are working with tangata whenua are manifesting themselves in the architecture space.
Having my daughter has helped distill where I want to put my energy. She’s a little firecracker Scorpio, the lucky recipient of the dreams of my parents’ generation who fought to have te reo Māori as the language of this country. She’s a 100% fluent Māori speaker who’s immersed in it. And of course she’s picking up English, because how can you not?
I also was fortunate to be raised in te reo. My mum, who’s Pākehā, made a conscious effort that I had Māori schooling and she learned with me. Like many, it’s a constant effort to keep learning and upskilling and try our hardest to be speaking as much as possible.
Working with tangata whenua [in architecture] was always an interest but not a possibility. In recent years, as I’ve got a bit more senior, I’ve had more direct ability to work on those projects.
There’s a real renaissance at the moment for Māori art, design and architecture and the need for Māori to see ourselves in the built environment and public spaces.
It’s amazing. It’s about bloody time. pigments.
Turei’s own work, a piece from the series Hokinga ki Tīkapa Moana, for which she harvests earth The painted hue (gourds) and clay work is by Moko, a collaboration with Thea Ceramics.