Reputedly visited by the famed Polynesian explorer Kupe, the Porirua Basin has a long history of occupation, with Te Awarua-o-Porirua providing a rich supply of seafood and its shoreline offering fertile areas for growing crops. Ngāi Tara and Ngāti Ira were among the occupants of the area until the early 1800s, building fortified pā at strategic locations, but were displaced in the 1820s by Ngāti Toa migrating south under the leadership of Te Rauparaha.

Pākehā whalers arrived in the 1830s. Their shore stations were short-lived, but settlers brought out by the New Zealand Company began arriving in Wellington from the 1840s, soon establishing farms and mills along the Old Porirua Road. Disputes about land sales inevitably led to tensions, which were expressed architecturally with barracks at Paremata, across the harbour from Porirua, the ruins of which remain visible.

There began a relentless transformation of the landscape around the harbour. Settler farmers gradually stripped forested hillsides to create fields. The Porirua Lunatic Asylum opened on a farm overlooking the harbour in 1887. Psychiatric hospitals were, at the time, among the nation’s largest institutions, and the complex also provided social and sporting amenities unusual for a rural area. (Earthquake damage in the 1940s led to the sprawling main hospital being demolished and replaced with smaller buildings.) The 1880s also saw the completion of the Wellington to Manawatū railway line and, through the first half of the 20th century, improvements in road and rail connections allowed the area to grow steadily as a commuter satellite of Wellington.

With the advent of the motorway in the 1950s, the pace of change accelerated. Whole new suburbs began to be carved from the hills around the Porirua Basin, including the nation’s largest areas of state housing. These developments were highly planned, though the area’s undulating terrain didn’t especially suit the norm of the suburban house, and huge earthworks were often required.

In the late 1950s, the Government moved to create a new town centre, the largest yet undertaken in New Zealand. Influenced by ‘New Town’ developments in post-war Britain, the Ministry of Works set out a plan for a massive land-forming project to reclaim marshland onto which to place a civic centre. Including shopping, entertainment, civic amenities and administrative agencies, it was rapidly constructed through the 1960s — Porirua attained city status in 1965 as the population passed 20,000 — with the polis crowned in 1976 by the opening of New Zealand’s first McDonald’s.

Industry was introduced in parallel, most spectacularly in the flattening of a hillside for the vast Todd Park manufacturing complex. For a time, these plans were rewarded — in the mid-1970s, Porirua had effectively zero unemployment. However, the economic upheavals of the 1980s did particular damage in the area, from which it has struggled to recover. The city centre has benefited from urban renewal efforts; a burst of activity in the late-1990s produced Pātaka, the Aquatic Centre, a new shopping mall, and Architecture Workshop’s now-removed canopies (1995); another revitalisation project starting in the mid-2010s brought a ‘fresh energy and identity’.

Porirua’s story demonstrates both the power and limitations of town planning. Bulldozed into existence, the city centre shows both how well-resourced action can bring about radical change, while the adjacent Todd Park and Mental Hospital demonstrate, respectively, how easily economic and natural forces can render those plans futile. However, the almost-instant creation of the city reminds us, at a time in history when we need to alter, radically, the way we live, that our society is capable of delivering rapid, large-scale change when leadership is present.

THE ITINERARY

1. 1887 – Gear Homestead ‘Okowai’

 1 Okowai Road
Robert Edwards

This is the grand home of James Gear, an English butcher initially attracted to New Zealand by the Gold Rush but who went on to achieve success in the processing and refrigerating of meat for export. He purchased a nearly-400-acre estate overlooking the harbour and had a house built for his family; it remained occupied by his descendants until 1967. It is now a functions venue. Visitors of a certain generation will recognise the house as the main setting from splatter movie Bad Taste (1988), the first feature film by Peter Jackson, who grew up nearby in Pukerua Bay.

2. 1910 – Porirua Hospital Museum (Former F Ward)

24 Upper Main Drive
Public Works Department

Opened in 1887, the Victorian-style buildings of the Porirua Mental Hospital sprawled across the hills of Kenepuru, the institution growing to become one of the country’s largest psychiatric facilities. Damaged by the 1942 Wairarapa earthquakes, the vast brick main hospital building was demolished soon afterwards and replaced by smaller ‘villa’ buildings. F Ward housed female patients and is the last surviving structure from the original complex. It officially closed in the 1970s and now operates as a museum, open on Tuesday afternoons. Take a look at the Porirua Hospital Chapel (1966) next door, designed by Ronald G. Henderson and Associates

3. 1967 – State Life Insurance Offices (Former)

6 Hagley Street
Porter and Martin

The Wellington-based firm Porter and Martin worked around the country producing local and central government buildings, schools and hospitals, but its output also included offices, apartment buildings and churches. George Porter was prolific: active as an architect, a town planner and an environmentalist. He was also an influential, long-serving Wellington city councillor, best known for his advocacy for medium and high-density housing. As town planners, Porter and Martin assisted in provincial towns from Kawerau to Greymouth, and developed schemes around the wider Porirua area; the firm also designed Porirua Fire Station (1961) across town at 10 Mungavin Avenue.

4. 1967 – Porirua Municipal Office

16 Cobham Court
Maurice B. Patience

Like the work of other key figures of his generation, Patience’s work spanned from architecture to larger-scale civic design and town planning. He is perhaps now best known for the Palmerston North Civic Centre, a project won jointly with his son in a competition and constructed through the 1970s. This building stands at the gateway to the built-from-scratch civic centre; it is a measure of both the magnitude of change and the confidence of local leaders that this seven-storey administrative complex was constructed on what had previously been marshland. As well as Borough Council offices, it originally housed the city library.

5. 1974 – Todd Park Complex

3 Heriot Drive
Stephenson & Turner

Todd Motors held numerous licences to assemble cars in New Zealand. Having acquired the Mitsubishi franchise in 1970, the company moved its plant to this huge site from Petone, in part to make way for road expansion there. However, Rogernomics reforms to import tariffs in the 1980s dented the local car industry’s profitability. Todd sold to Mitsubishi, and car assembly on the site eventually ceased in 1998. The vast assembly plant now contains a PlaceMakers store and other enterprises, and the administrative blocks are now Mitsubishi Motors HQ and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa (renovated by APG Architects in 2024).

6. 1978 – Housing Corporation Offices

1 Walton Leigh Avenue
Structon Group

Active from the 1940s to the 1980s, Wellington-based Structon Group grew into a large multidisciplinary firm. Its oeuvre spanned from convents to science labs but office towers were a specialty. The latter output included offices for the Housing Corporation around the country — smaller regional offices in cities such as Nelson, Gisborne and Whanganui, as well as a nine-storey brutalist building in then rapidly developing Manukau City (5 Osterley Way, 1979). The Porirua office was by far the largest: a perimeter block with expressed structure and stair towers that marked the peak of the firm’s foray into brutalism. Refer Architecture NZ May/June 2023

7. 1981 – Royal New Zealand Police College

24 Papakōwhai Road
Ministry of Works and Development

The nation’s first purpose-built police training facility, the complex follows a master plan produced under A. G. Christopherson in the Wellington office of the Architectural Division of the MoWD. The plan dispersed the buildings over the sloping contours of the site, the scale of residential wings brought down so they sit comfortably against their suburban backdrop. The MoWD designed the ‘village’ of residential buildings but delegated parts of the project to other firms: Girdlestone and Mitchell designed a training building and gymnasium block; Kofoed, Kenney and Partners was commissioned for the administration, amenities and classroom blocks. See Architecture NZ 2, 1980.

8. 1998 – Pātaka Art + Museum

17 Parumoana Street
Architecture+

Pātaka, which translates as ‘storehouse’, emerged from the amalgamation of the Porirua City Library and Page 90 Art Gallery, and the John Scott-designed Porirua Museum. The building adapted and extended an existing office and warehouse facility. To connect and order the building’s various facilities (museum, gallery, library, courtyard, performance space and bookable meeting facilities), the architects inserted a spine that creates a double-height internal street and provides an urban presence externally. It was a key part of the 1990s-era urban renewal, and was described by Peter Wood as “a visible vessel for the empowerment of an underdog community”. See Monument 45 Dec 2001/Jan 2002.

9. 2001 – J. H. Whittaker & Sons

24 Mohuia Crescent
Moller Architects

Todd Park was the flagship for Porirua industry, but the city’s planners intended the city to include a substantial area for manufacturing; unusually, they placed it immediately adjacent to the civic centre. Whittaker’s moved to Porirua during the 1960s but, in recent years, several Gordon Moller buildings have led a systematic rebuild of its site. The building most visible from the road is Stage 3 (2001), which contains a reception area, offices and staff amenities. The latest stage has just been completed on the road frontage. Moller Architects’ antecedent firm, Craig Craig Moller Architects, completed Hartham Tower in the civic centre (14 Hartham Place) in 1991.

10. 2005 – Te Kete Wānanga

Whitireia, 3 Wi Neera Drive
Athfield Architects

Whitireia was established in the mid-1980s, an early landmark being Block A (1989) by T. G. Dykes & Associates. This building was part of the second stage of the Whitireia Porirua campus redevelopment and Athfields’ second significant building on the site. It houses the Whitireia and WelTec campus library along with advanced learning services. Looking out on Te Awarua-o-Porirua, the building re-establishes the institution’s connection to the harbour, employing waka imagery and approached via a new repo (wetland) and reflecting pool. The project received multiple awards, including recognition for the surrounding landscaping, designed by Wraight + Associates.

11. 2008 – Te Rauparaha Arena

17 Parumoana Street
Stephenson & Turner

A long-running commercial firm best known for the monolithic black BNZ Building (1984) in Wellington, Stephenson and Turner completed the Porirua Aquatic Centre in 1998. Replacing a smaller recreational centre built in the 1970s, the Arena was developed alongside the Aquatic Centre to create the first ‘wet and dry’ amenity in the lower North Island. Designed for versatility, it houses a sports stadium with retractable seating, a smaller gymnasium, a theatre and meeting rooms. The project was funded in part by Porirua City Council entrepreneurship; a large block of farmland across the harbour at Aotea was acquired and then resold for development.

12. 2013 – Wikitoria Katene Building

Whitireia, 3 Wi Neera Drive
CGM + Foster Architects

As centrepiece of a 2011 plan to upgrade the Whitireia–WelTec Porirua campus, this building was designed to provide new Faculty of Health facilities, incorporating administration offices, classrooms, conference spaces, laboratories and simulation suites for nursing, paramedic and social work students. The exterior integrates decorative reliefs in concrete by local artist James Molnar, with landscaping by Pollen intended, in part, as coastal restoration of Whitireia’s reclaimed site. The building is named after Wikitoria Te Huruhuru Katene, a pioneering Māori nurse and rongoā practitioner whose contributions shaped both her community and the wider health sector.

13. 2016 – Porirua Kiosk

Cobham Court
Isthmus

The first stage of a plan to revitalise the city centre, the project includes food outlets, public toilets and external seating. Bestowing an NZIA Wellington Architecture Award in 2016, the jury wrote, “The building accommodates… amenities which are not typically closely coupled, within a compact footprint. However, through clever planning and screening, this finely crafted ‘object’ works. Timber, glass and metal combine to create a very robust yet welcoming facility… Through the deployment of simple patterns and bright colour, a subtle Pacifica theme is evoked, especially when shadows from the glass canopy fall across the structure’s timber skin.”

14. 2024 – Kai Tahi

20 Parumoana Street
Chris Moller Architecture + Urbanism with MacKay Curtis

Reorienting Porirua’s urban edge and drawing it back towards Te Awarua-o-Porirua foreshore, this adaptive reuse project features a dramatic glulam structure that directs visitors towards the harbour. Its taniwha-inspired form creates a continuous urban pedestrian spine, which links the foreshore with the city’s cultural heart — Pātaka — and is animated by a 60-metre-long Michel Tuffery mural. By reusing the concrete and steel frame of a former retail and industrial shed, the project transforms the prosaic structure into a high-performing, lively, and diverse food and market hall (kai tahi means ‘food for sharing’) with an integrated crèche. See Architecture NZ May/June 2025.

OTHER ADDRESSES

1847 – Paremata Barracks Ruins 

Ngāti Toa Domain, Pascoe Avenue, Paremata
Thomas H. Fitzgerald

1903 – Te Ngākau Tapu

20 Kenepuru Drive
Ernest Coleridge

1914 – Mortuary Chapel

Porirua Cemetery, 32 Kenepuru Drive
John Campbell,Government Architect

1971 – Former Post Office 

3 Serlby Place
Hall-Kenny & Partners
Now a hotel.

1972 – Pember House

3 Hagley Street
Fletcher Group Services

1974 – Institute of Environmental Science and Research

34 Kenepuru Drive
Haughton and Mair

1977 – Kenepuru Community Hospital

16 Hospital Drive
Cutter, Pickmere, Douglas and Partners

1980 – Ora Toa Takapūwāhia

1 Te Hiko Street
John Scott, Architect
Originally built asPorirua Museum.

2002 – Wellington Free Ambulance Station

8 Awatea Street
McKenzie Higham Architects

2016 – Bishop Viard College Gymnasium

20 Kenepuru Drive
Re-Design Architects

2027 – Kenepuru Science Centre 

34 Kenepuru Drive
Warren and Mahoney 

SOURCES

Key projects by many of the commercial firms in this guide – Stephenson and Turner, Structon Group, Maurice B. Patience, Porter and Martin – are included in Julia Gatley’s Long Live the Modern (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008). Fans of Porter and Martin might seek out Lewis Martin’s books, including Built for Us: The Work of Government and Colonial Architects, 1860s to 1960s (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004). The Athfield project at Whitireia is included in Julia Gatley’s Athfield Architects (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2012) and Pātaka is included in Stephen Stratford’s Herriot + Melhuish Architecture, Architecture+, Studio Pacific Architecture (Auckland: NZ Architectural Publications Trust, 2008). Those after some local history could seek out Neil and June Penman’s very well-illustrated A Portrait of Porirua: The Creation of a Planned City (Porirua: The Penmanship Press, 2015), Michael Keith’s slender but useful They Came on the Tides: A Short History of Porirua and its People (Porirua; Porirua City Council, 1990) or the series of little publications produced by Porirua Museum in the early 1990s.

The Itinerary series is supported by Dulux Colours of New Zealand. Dulux Colour Specialist Davina Harper has selected a Colours of New Zealand palette based on this itinerary. See the full range and order colour samples here.