Thames

WORDS: NICOLA MARTIN • IMAGERY: PETER DRURY There’s a beautiful old building on Queen Street in Thames as you pass KFC and head for the Thames Coast Road. It sits regally alongside a contemporary, architecturally designed addition. The beauty of a Thames building has helped to attract The two linked buildings – the Category 2-listed former Carnegie Public Library and a modern, temperature-controlled archive, an award-winning a swathe of volunteers to the structure in its own right – are known as The Treasury Research Centre and Archive (‘The Treasury’) and task of protecting and sharing are operated by The Coromandel Heritage Trust. the area’s rich heritage The complex shows what a group of determined volunteers who are passionate about heritage can achieve when they put their minds to it. Volunteers worked for more than two decades, firstly to find a home for the research centre, then to

fundraise $1.1 million to build the archive. Now a team of around 50 volunteers runs The Treasury, maintaining and cataloguing the collections of heritage books and documents it has been gifted over decades.

“A lot of people’s hearts are invested in The Treasury. They are an ardent group and with that brings great things,” says acting manager Lucy Gable-Thom.

The trust moved into the Carnegie Public Library in 2009, after Thames-Coromandel District Council carried out earthquake strengthening and refurbished the building. It acquired the property next door and in 2013 the modern heat-, light- and dust-controlled archive was built.

Lucy says the trust has been so successful in attracting volunteers in part because of the beauty of the heritage building, first constructed in 1905 and paid for by American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Completed at a cost of £1964, the original library was one of more than 2500 ‘free’ libraries built worldwide and funded by the philanthropist in the early 20th century.

“People who love heritage and believe in the importance of protecting historical records are drawn to The Treasury, and they also want to give back and be part of it,” says Lucy.

The archive holds heritage records, photos and documents from people, families and businesses that formed the Coromandel Peninsula, Ohinemuri, Te Aroha and the Hauraki Plains region, Te Tara-oTe-Ika a Maui. It includes collections from families who forged some of New Zealand’s foremost heavy industries – from A&G Price and its steam engines to Phoenix Breweries, famous for its German-style beer and for eventually becoming part of New Zealand Breweries and later Lion.

Volunteer Lise Cook says she was drawn to The Treasury by an advertisement on the Volunteering Waikato website in 2020 as she looked to move her film business out of Auckland after the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Lise (Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Tūwharetoa) says she was immediately taken not only with the building but also with the collections it cares for. “I saw the archive and the collections and was intrigued. They have such a huge collection of books and people’s family records,” she says.

Lise saw volunteering as an opportunity to broaden her knowledge and experience base, and she also wanted to see what Māori heritage she might be able to help the trust uncover.

1 Architectural firm Architectus designed the modern, temperature-controlled archive (left) linking to the historic

Carnegie Public Library (right). The project won an award in the heritage category of the 2015

New Zealand Architecture

Awards.

2 L-R: Volunteers Marg

Sewell, Lise Cook and

Sandy Lautenbach were drawn to give their time to The Treasury through their interest in protecting the area’s rich heritage and sharing it with future generations.

“Māori heritage is more than documents and objects, but I didn’t see a lot of that coming to the fore. Heritage is our connection to our whenua and taiao. My hope in becoming a volunteer is that I can help to start drawing out some of that local heritage too,” says Lise.

She is careful to point out that she doesn’t speak for any local iwi and her role is only to provide advice on how The Treasury might best find those stories or go about identifying records housed in the archive that have yet to be catalogued.

Lise is a firm believer that heritage helps people to open their worlds and find their places within them.

“There is a whakataukī that says ‘Ka mua, ka muri’ – ‘walking backwards into the future’. It’s the idea that you need to look to the past to inform the future. It’s helping me to gain that knowledge of the people who were here before me,” she says.

Lise has produced a video tour of the Carnegie Public Library building in te reo, covering what The Treasury is and does. On Tuesdays you can find her working through the tangata whenua shelf in the archive’s reading room, cataloguing items.

“We were looking through the drawers the other day and lifted up a sheet of paper and there were all these beautiful drawings of Māori. There are all these taonga in there that people have handed in over the years and we don’t always know where they have come from or who they are, so part of the job is helping to work that out.”

Since becoming a volunteer, she has also joined The Treasury’s board. “There aren’t often people with the skills in or knowledge of tikanga in these organisations run by volunteers. I thought if I walked onto the bridge maybe they would meet me halfway and we could see where we went from there.”

Lucy says The Treasury has attracted volunteers with a wide skill base. Advertisements on the Volunteering Waikato website and posters pasted around Thames have piqued people’s interest and connected them to organisations working in the GLAM sector – the galleries, libraries, archives and museums space.

“I think reaching into organisations and advertising where those interests already exist is a large part of the success.”

Marg Sewell says she started volunteering at The Treasury after volunteering on the front desk at Thames Museum. She moved to Thames from the Kāpiti Coast to be closer to her family in Auckland.

“Thames is unique. A lot of New Zealand’s first European descendants started in Thames. There is a huge amount of heritage here and it’s the first time I have lived in a place that has that kind of base.”

She spotted a poster in town looking for volunteers at The Treasury and couldn’t resist the chance to work in the beautiful building. Now she spends one or two days a week helping to catalogue documents in the archive, recording each one in a new digital system that will see some of the collection made available online.

taiao: environment tangata whenua: the ‘people of the land’, the local Māori community who trace descent from ancestors who settled in or occupied the area tikanga: tradition, protocol whakataukī: proverb whenua: land

“I really love it. It’s interesting to work your way through the treasures and it’s very hard to resist a bit of an extra flick here or an extra look there. It’s all adding to the depth of my knowledge of the area.”

Thames by its nature seems to attract people who are interested in heritage, says Lucy, and they are all very willing to get involved.

The trust also receives support from ThamesCoromandel District Council and Hauraki District Council, contributing to a paid manager and part-time administrative assistant.

It has also been successful in a series of recent funding rounds from the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Museum Hardship Fund.

Lucy says the volunteers are involved in almost all aspects of The Treasury, from cataloguing and helping to manage the collection to manning the reception desk and helping visitors.

There are also volunteers like Sandy Lautenbach. Her family was one of the pioneering families in the district, originally arriving from Scotland.

Sandy was raised by two aunts and an uncle on her father’s side. Her aunt Ailsa Lamb was one of the first financial supporters of The Treasury. A photo of Ailsa sits in The Treasury’s reading room.

“So many people have supported The Treasury. I think people just realise heritage is something we need to preserve, and Thames has so much of it,” says Sandy.

Sandy’s primary role is building relationships and looking after booksellers that sell The Treasury’s True Tales series of books. Six books have been published to date, with a seventh on its way.

The books are a collection of stories and tales of events, characters and heritage places that shaped the region, and are sold in bookshops between Katikati and Thames.

“I do it because I love it and I love the stories and I’m proud. I just love heritage,” says Sandy.

“I’m also passionate about the younger generations getting an understanding of what has gone before them and I think that is what The Treasury is here for and is helping to do.

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To view the video tour of the Carnegie Library building in te reo Māori, visit www.facebook.com/ TheTreasuryThames/videos/1229997074092811

1 Lise Cook firmly believes that heritage helps to open people’s worlds.

2 Sandy Lautenbach’s ancestors were among the pioneering families in Thames.

3 Marg Sewell says after moving to Thames from the Kāpiti Coast she was struck by the huge amount of heritage in the town.

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GROUND ZERO WORDS: ANNA KNOX

Meeting our 2050 net-zero-carbon aspirations and addressing New Zealand’s housing crisis are among the most substantive challenges of our time. Retaining and retrofitting heritage buildings can be part of the solutions to both

“The greenest building,” noted Carl Elefante, former president of the American Institute of Architects, “is one that is already built.”

With a goal to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050, sectors across New Zealand are putting their shoulders to the wheel to meet the challenge. And in the building sector there’s a growing body of research adding weight to Elefante’s maxim, which demonstrates that by adapting and retrofitting existing buildings – including heritage buildings – instead of demolishing them and building new ones, significant reductions in carbon emissions can be made.

Globally, the building and construction sector is responsible for an estimated 38 percent of CO₂ emissions, 10 percent being from the production and supply of building materials and construction.

According to the New Zealand Green Building Council, in Aotearoa New Zealand the built environment makes up 20 percent of our carbon footprint.

With current growth, this is likely to rise. As an indicator, emissions from the construction industry increased by 66 percent between 2007 and 2017.

The Government’s Building for Climate Change web page states: “If New Zealand is to achieve its climate change goals, including net zero carbon by 2050, the building and construction sector must play its part”.

But how? And how can heritage help?

Rachel Paschoalin is a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington and her research addresses these questions.

“After the Paris Agreement, it became clear that globally we had to find ways to reduce emissions,” she says. “The question for me is ‘how can heritage contribute?’”

Rachel is researching the retention and retrofitting of heritage buildings.

In the decision-making process around heritage buildings and sustainability, she says, the whole life cycle of a building, from construction through a 90-year lifespan should be considered.

Several studies, including Rachel’s, have been done in this area and the results have underpinned a best practice database and guidelines for what is known as sympathetic upgrades of heritage buildings.

“Early research shows that sympathetically upgrading and reusing existing buildings, rather than demolishing and building new, could dramatically improve a building’s energy efficiency and would make substantial energy savings because the CO₂ emissions already embodied within existing buildings would not be lost through demolition,” states the Historic England Heritage Counts report from 2020.

Adaptive reuse – the repurposing of a heritage building – is an effective way to meet pressing commercial and residential building needs without demolition. Robin Byron, Senior Conservation Architect for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, cites Auckland’s Britomart Precinct, centred on the busy train station (itself adapted from the former Chief Post Office building) as one of the most outstanding examples of adaptive reuse in New Zealand.

Apihai Te Kawau, a chief of Ngāti Whātua, the iwi that holds mana whenua of the area, gifted 3000 acres (1214 hectares) of land in the vicinity to Governor Hobson for the construction of a new capital after the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The existing, predominantly warehouse buildings were largely built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A vibrant business district for decades, by the 1990s many of the buildings were shuttered and slated for demolition. Long-term investment, regeneration and management have seen a dramatic transformation of the area, with the heritage buildings restored and repurposed in a multipurpose commercial precinct with a public square at its heart. It has catalysed similar adaptive reuse projects around the motu, such as The Tannery in Christchurch.

The precinct has also been futureproofed for longevity and sustainability.

“This example of adaptive reuse has been very forward thinking,” Robin says.

“The buildings have been regenerated – planned, strengthened, upgraded and conserved – in such a way that any subsequent changes in functions and use can be achieved relatively easily. Because of this foresight and flexibility, these buildings can continue to adapt and change into the future.”

In many cases, unused heritage buildings present excellent opportunities to align heritage conservation, environmental responsibility and the needs of the community. Jamie Jacobs, Director Central Region for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, cites the Gordon Wilson Flats and the adjacent McLean Flats in Wellington as examples.

“The buildings have outstanding heritage significance for their associations with the state housing programme and its Modernist architectural evolution after World War II,” he says.

“The retention and sensitive adaptation of these heritage buildings for current residential needs would both acknowledge their history and contribute muchneeded high-density housing to central Wellington.

“And by opting to reuse rather than demolish and redevelop the site, the embodied energy of a massive reinforced-concrete building is not lost, and the remains irresponsibly dumped in the tip.”

There are many more good examples of adaptive reuse in action around New Zealand, such as the Old Bank Arcade and the T&G Mutual Life Assurance Society building on Lambton Quay in Wellington.

In Dunedin, a former bus depot has been incorporated into the Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, while the Hocken Collections research library is housed in a former cheese factory.

In Oamaru, Casa Nova, an early stately home and Category 1 building, has been converted into boutique accommodation and a restaurant.

However, it is critical to note that while retaining an existing heritage building helps to reduce emissions, it may not be enough. Rachel’s research shows that the most dramatic reduction in carbon emissions comes from improving the health and energy efficiency of a retained heritage building through retrofit.

There are challenges to doing this in New Zealand, not least of which is a need for guidelines. While a bestpractice database and well-established guidelines for retention and retrofitting of heritage buildings exist in Europe and the US*, there is no such thing here.

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“The guides contain broad frameworks as well as specific technical advice,” says Rachel. “For example, for improving insulation, how to deal with windows and so on, based on research and practice.”

Rachel’s project over the past three years has been to investigate from both policy and a practice perspectives how to adapt and tailor those existing international guidelines for New Zealand, allowing for unique environmental factors such as seismic strengthening and building materials.

Perhaps the most significant barrier in practice, though, is the cost of labour and materials. A carbonreducing retrofit comes with a big price ticket in New Zealand, as Wellington architect James Solari notes.

“We have a limited availability of good skillsets aligned to older, more traditional construction techniques, so they become fairly specialist skillsets,” he says.

“Material costs are also perceived to be reasonably high here compared with overseas markets; this being a factor for our lack of scale relative to the international construction market, as well as very high freight costs.”

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mana whenua: those with tribal authority over land or territory by virtue of possession and/or occupation motu: island; country

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Auckland’s Britomart

Precinct, centred on the busy train station, is one of the outstanding examples of adaptive reuse in New Zealand.

IMAGERY:

SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

4 A former bus depot is incorporated into the

Toitū Otago Settlers

Museum.

IMAGERY: TONY HISGETT,

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

CoreLogic data backs this perception, showing steadily rising costs in the sector over the past decade, with an increase in the cost of building materials in 2021 of 5.5 percent.

The Commerce Commission is currently investigating the market for residential building materials, looking at potential competition issues.

Despite these challenges, James is enthusiastic about the possibilities of adaptive reuse. He says awareness of the issue is growing and cites Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, who won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2021 as an example. The duo’s “rallying cry”, as the Guardian puts it, is: “Never demolish, never remove – always add, transform and reuse”.

James’s Wellington-based company, Solari Architects, is at work on a project converting a 1970s office space into apartments, demonstrating how reuse and retrofitting projects can also offer more climatefriendly solutions to our housing crisis.

Initially, the firm considered demolishing the former Works Depot on George Street in Thorndon.

“But once we understood the opportunities the building had, the good bones of architecture and the scope for repurposing,” explains James, “a more exciting solution emerged.”

The unique profile of the roof is a particular feature in the design for the 45 new apartments.

“It’s turning something forgotten into something useful. It’s retaining and capturing something in time,” he comments.

Another project converting a 1930s office building into apartments is almost complete, and the repurposing and retrofitting of a former surf shop in Lyall Bay has turned it into a warm, well-insulated, energy-efficient home for its owners.

A building’s longevity – its ability to become ‘future heritage’ – is another important concern for Solari Architects.

“We need to encourage well-designed solutions that will stand the test of time and make long-term contributions,” says James.

He points out that in the necessary rush to meet our existing and future housing needs, the question of building longevity might easily fall through the cracks. He believes New Zealand is lacking a good framework and decision-making tools for intensification.

“While some of our processes are not useful, where we need them they are lacking,” he says.

“The process frameworks we work under lack proper qualitative controls. The experiential aspects of good design overlaid with quality construction create longevity. Good design needs to be a much higher priority.”

A case in point is the proposed three-storey, threehouse infill plan. Through removing the consent application process, considerations such as a building’s longevity, as well as environmental factors such as light, warmth and ventilation, could go largely unchecked.

The holistic approach required when tackling the enormous challenge of our net-zero-carbon goal is something of which both James and Rachel are acutely aware.

“Reducing emissions is also about putting people in the right places,” says James, as one example. “Encouraging higher density living in places with good community centres and public transport links is key.”

Rachel’s approach emphasises the need for multiple perspectives, with many stakeholders contributing to the decision-making process on the retention and retrofit of heritage buildings, including professionals in heritage, architecture, the building industry and policy.

“The concept of sustainability is not only focused on environmental issues,” she says.

“We have to think about economic, social and cultural aspects. In the same way, when we are thinking about retrofitting a building, we also have to think about all the different benefits we can gain. Not just protecting the building.”

Rachel’s paper can be read online at www.mdpi.com/ 2571-9408/4/4/203/htm *The guidelines referred to in the article are known as En 16883:2017 (European) and Guideline 34-2019 (United States).

WORDS AND IMAGE: MIKE HEYDON

While visiting the Milton area in Otago for a Heritage New Zealand magazine shoot, I discovered Lovells Flat Presbyterian Church down a straight and dusty gravel road. I stopped the car when I recognised the big old tree out the front – a ‘monkey puzzle’ tree (Araucaria araucana). Our crib in Naseby has one too, although unfortunately its condition isn’t as good as the tree visible at the top of this photo. Many of these trees were planted in the 1880s, but sadly quite a few of them are slowly dying now.

New Zealand is full of fantastic old churches, many with new leases of life as people find innovative and interesting uses for them. They’re often great to photograph too.

Camera: Nikon D850 Lens: 24-70mm f2.8 ED @29mm Exposure: f4.5 1/400th sec