The humble supplejack might not seem an inspirational plant, but for the architects designing the new Dunedin hospital it has fuelled a wellspring of creativity.
The Ngāi Tahu who called Ōtepoti home used the plant, which grew abundantly in the area, for a range of purposes, including medicinal.
Its main use was as lashing or rope, and that use for joining and splicing have become important design elements in the complex.
Its colours also helped determine the palate used for both the interiors and exteriors of the five-storey outpatient building, principal architect Darryl Haines, from Warren and Mahoney, said.
"The co-design process we have gone through has been very rich and very deep, and it has been very much since day one," he said.
"There has been a close connection and we have been working with Aukaha [a consultancy firm, formerly known as Kāi Tahu ki Otago Natural Resource Management Ltd], which has developed for us a story of the site and the land, and we have worked with them to incorporate that into the project."
The hospital site straddles both the original foreshore and long-settled land, and the architects have planned buildings which go "from dry feet to wet feet" as they march along the site.
Hence, the outpatient building will mainly use colours and materials associated with the land, while the larger inpatients building will use the colours of the sea to reference it being built on largely reclaimed land.
"The upturned waka is another important part of the narrative," Mr Haines said.
"But eventually the Māori got shunted away and ended up living underneath their upturned waka as shelter."
This would be referenced through things such as the use of wooden ceilings in some interior spaces.
View shafts from the building would also line up to a range of significant local sites.
While Mr Haines and his team had been deeply considering the small details of the building, the minute things were in the context of a large hospital development and in a multi-building complex which would be an unusually large construction project in a New Zealand context.
"I think that Dunedin is grappling with what that means and how we are going to deliver it.
"It is certainly easier to design it than it is to deliver it in many ways."
The obvious design constraint was the fact the new hospital would be bordered on both sides by a state highway.
Much time had been spent working out where to position entrances and exists so as to minimise disruption on arterial routes, and how to make the surrounding space usable for the public.
The hospital would also sit in flood-prone land, although weather events severe enough to disrupt its functions were likely to be rare.
Despite that, both buildings would be set 1.8m above ground meaning architects had some hard edges to soften; incorporating ramps and allowing vehicle access would create some challenges, Mr Haines said.
"One of the things that we have done is to pull the building back from the street on the Cumberland St side," he said.
"We are trying to create an urban edge if you like — a more friendly, pedestrianised edge — all the way along both the outpatient building and the inpatient building.
"We acknowledge that side is closer to the city so it will probably be more pedestrianised than Castle St, but whatever the decision on the two-way thing we can make it work, and we will make it work.
"We are also aware that there is more development to come to the north of our site — the health precinct work that other people are involved in.
"We would like that green band to continue all the way, if we can, through to the university campus as a generous urban strip."
Plonking two sizeable modern buildings into a centre city site which has many historic buildings nearby also posed architectural questions to be answered, such as whether they would overshadow or dominate the cityscape, or create issues with shading and wind patterns.
"We are certainly aware of our neighbourhood, and we are very conscious of the fire station, which is a heritage classified building: some of the moves we have made with this building pay homage to that," Mr Haines said.
"We are aware of the scale of this building, which at five-storeys is a reasonably significant building, so our approach has been to break it down in terms of its elements.
"We break it down into smaller forms, we step it down from the street where we are able to, so that it looks like a series of forms rather than one block of cheese."
Liaison between the architects and the commissioners of the project, Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand, is handled by southern project director Bridget Dickson.
Her role involved ensuring the concerns of locals was not lost in the high-level discussions about a project costing taxpayers more than $1.4 billion.
The hospital had to be fit for purpose for the southern community as a whole, whether they were clinicians, patients, whānau or visitors, she said.
To that end, more than 450 people had been consulted so far.
"I think that many will see the fruits of their labours once the buildings start to take shape," Ms Dickson said.
"They will know that something is like that because of their input, [for example] the font on that sign was enlarged because it was too small.
"A lot of small details, cumulatively, will mean that there has been a loud local voice through much of this.
"Our team lives here and we are all very much biased towards our southern home.
"And even though we might have been rebranded, our hearts all very much care about the health system that our region delivers — even though it is now part of a national health system.
"It is our parents or grandparents or our kids or ourselves that are going to be using the service in the end."
