Students earthed in music

Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Piripono students Ben Aratema, 16, Sala Masina, 16, and Melissa Saunders, 15, by their school's flax/earth music room. Picture / Dean Purcell

Otara's Kura Kaupapa Maori o Piripono is about to open what is almost certainly the country's only school music room built of flax-reinforced earth.

The 36sq m room has been built as a prototype for a building technique that Rau Hoskins, of Auckland architects Design Tribe, hopes will become a new Maori style of architecture, replacing the traditional nikau and raupo huts.

He told the inaugural conference of a new body, Community Housing Aotearoa, in Auckland yesterday that society needed to find cheaper forms of housing to bridge a $40,000 to $70,000 gap between what most people could afford and the cost of conventional new houses.

He said the costs of flax-reinforced earth construction would not be known until building started on a larger scale beyond the Otara structure and another at Kaiaua, on the Firth of Thames.

"The flax/earth housing is not necessarily going to be cheaper, but it will be better in environmental concerns, longevity, humidity and acoustics," Mr Hoskins said.

"We are looking at a paradigm shift because Maori have traditionally not used rammed-earth construction. Where a nikau or raupo whare would last 20 years or so before it was rebuilt, we will be looking at dwellings that will last 200 years."

The Otara building will form part of a village being developed on a large vacant site next to the kura by the Kokiri Te Rahuitanga Ki Otara, which runs training programmes for young people.