This award-winning TV series explored whare significant to a community, using the buildings themselves as a vessel for storytelling. Interviews delve into each whare’s design and build, and its cultural and historical significance. This first episode visits Whakatāne to enter Ngāti Awa’s globetrotting meeting house, Mātaatua. After 130 years the building was returned home and restored, following a Treaty of Waitangi settlement. It reopened in 2011. The te reo series was made by the company behind architecture show Whare Māori. To translate, press the 'CC' logo at the bottom of the screen.
These buildings are not only beautiful physical structures, they are also vessels for stories of hapū and iwi and Aotearoa as a nation. Those who live in and around these whare have strong emotional relationships with them, and we were privileged to have people share quite personal stories about the whare’s presence in their lives.– Producer Megan Douglas, when Whare Taonga launched in May 2012
Made with funding from Te Māngai Pāho
Log in
×