There is a giant, bulbous sea creature on the Porirua Harbour foreshore, climbing its way out of the swamp on its bendy, misshapen legs and crawling south towards the North City Shopping Centre. The sea slug, Kai Tahi (‘food for sharing’), afloat in a sea of bland, big-box retailing that washes unrestrained over the foreshore, is a breakthrough in more ways than one. It provides a central location for food and events but is also a pathway to the future. It links the harbour to the cultural heart of Porirua: a challenge in this highly multicultural city. It provides an exchange point between generations, acting as a catalyst for a better Porirua. This is a sea slug, a taniwha, a kraken, a giant nudibranch, perhaps: a creature from the deep, moulting on the beach, harbouring a massive appetite for change.

There is an interesting back story to this project, which is most unlike your typical corporate food and beverage outlet. The project began more than a decade ago, with property developer Paul Robinson purchasing a number of old boxy retail sheds, including a former bra factory and leather-working studio, on the edge of Porirua harbourside. There’s not much traditional street-based retailing in Porirua, so locals have grown used to driving to the mall. There are cars and car parks everywhere, with roundabouts at every turn. Two seismic fault lines nearby, one either side of the site, make the site extra edgy. Seagulls wait patiently.

Victoria University star graduate Elyjana Roach, the first Samoan woman architect to attend the Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design), completed her MArch (Prof) thesis on this very site, proposing such a convincing argument for urban foreshore regeneration that Porirua City Council and Ngāti Toa Rangatira both bought into the scheme. By serendipity, Robinson wanted to redevelop the land and the plan took hold. The retail shed is given a new lease of life as a market hall and a former service lane becomes an arcade, connecting the land to the sea. Architect Chris Moller corrects me with a twinkle in his eye, “No, no! it’s all the other way around. The project connects the sea to the land…”

It’s a tricky task, to reorient a city. All the buildings currently face the streets, with their back doors facing the harbour in a mass whakapohane to nature. One by one, they need to be turned around to make the harbour the focus once more. Instead of driving to the mall, Moller and Robinson want people walking on the shoreline round to the market hall, making the most of what can be a stunning foreshore. Surely that’s a tall order for fast food?

The project takes the existing concrete and steel shed structure and turns it into a market building, then adds an arcade in a modern translation of an ancient Arabian Souk, crafted lovingly from timber and bubbles. Giant glass doors open out each end for sunshine or close off to keep out the occasional winds. The 10 modules that make up the laneway are 9m wide by 9m high: the same pattern and size as both the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul (Türkiye) and the longest roofed market in the world, the Qeysarriyeh Bazaar in Isfahan (Iran). These are places that Moller has explored in his previous life as an urban designer based in the Netherlands. This Aotearoan sea creature has a lot of room to grow.

Moller, working with MacKay Curtis on the design documentation, treats the market hall as a found space, with clerestory glazing cut in both sides, ensuring that the space captures morning as well as afternoon sunlight. Garden planters will arrive at some stage to activate the roof garden. Kai Tahi is used by the local established Pasifika community, along with more-recent Asian arrivals, who have swiftly taken the venue to their heart. This is the opposite of the traditionally branded, corporate-moneyed, plastic wasteland mall. One corner has been set up as a crèche for tamariki so the market hall echoes with the sounds of children’s laughter. Other spaces are filled with a plethora of tasty ethnic foods, in a cross-section of Porirua’s vibrant immigrant make-up. There’s way too much fried food here to be good for anyone’s pancreas but there is some sweet goodness to be found in the architecture and the engineering. 

The structure, by superstar engineer Dunning Thornton’s Alistair Cattanach working with the architects, is an absolute joy. The arcade is a series of pure, honest timber portals in chunky glulam, connected with refined steel brackets and tightened with taut steel tension members. The arcade’s legs lean in opposite directions so, by tensioning the rods, the timber stays permanently in compression – resolutely non-orthogonal and non-orthodox. The arcade is as light as it can be to keep the seismic load down low, designed in an iterative parametric form to make the 2D moment frame portals into a longitudinal 3D matrix. Somehow, an upper floor of timber has been delicately slid into the remaining gap. The five-sided, multi-triangulated structure makes up the frame of the arcade: an engineer’s dream and (possibly) an architect’s nightmare. It’s a concept that is easier to grasp after a nice, rich Hawke’s Bay pinot noir. The members span past one another, allowing each to lap dance over its neighbour and lighten the structure overall. The resulting skin is therefore composed of interlinked triangles and roofed not with heavy, fragile glass but, instead, with taut, firm bubbles of lightweight flexible Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). Skylights and fans occupy the rooftop, proudly displayed, keeping temperatures well moderated. 

Materials are treated as purely as possible, with nothing extraneous added. The old leather-working tanks still exist down below floor level, now repurposed as water-treatment tanks to improve the harbour’s health. Handrails are at a good height for leaning on with a glass of amber nectar in your hand. Overlaid on this is a delicate tracery of services, which have been installed with immaculate precision by contractors evidently very proud of their work. Vibrant yellow air ducts inchworm their way across the ceiling, lovingly coordinated. Copper piping, immaculately laid, transfers hot and cold water across the spaces. A wonderful feature is a series of vibrant yellow skylights, which cast a glowing series of golden pools of light on the floor of the arcade. Children run from one illuminated pool of liquid buttercup to another. As the day progresses, the yellow dots flood the space, dance across the floor, and, by 2pm, they’re climbing slowly up the wall. For a building that is rigidly static, there is a lot of dancing going on amongst the members, despite all the tension. There’s no McDonald’s here but I’m lovin’ it!

What really enlivens the arcade space is a 60-metre-long mural by Michel Tuffery where we see the original fauna of Te Awarua-o-Porirua wriggling along the wall: land creatures, sea creatures and sky creatures all living and swimming nearby. Drawn simply in pencil on the existing concrete wall, but looking almost carved into the concrete, the artwork is embellished by a series of stainless-steel, laser-cut disks depicting the phases of the moon. The view to the north is of the sea, the sky and the hills of Kāpiti Coast, while, to the south, it looks directly towards Pātaka museum, culture and commerce. Raise your eyes from the acres of concrete wasteland and cars towards Rangi and Papa, sky and earth, hillsides and the pathway towards Pōneke. It is a blueprint for Porirua to follow: a 20-year plan, perhaps.

Current signage is confusing but the building itself acts as the real sign, with the puffy ETFE skin visible from further afield, looking for all the world like a moulting cicada at the end of summer. Stage Two will be starting soon, carefully adding more event space, more independent food outlets, more non-chain retail, and some niche office space like boat sheds on steroids. All will add to Kai Tahi’s appeal as a destination for Porirua 2.0 and continue the challenge of repurposing tired, old big-box retail into a vibrant new take on a harbourside city. Go there. Marvel at the engineering. Eat some kai. Be impressed.