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Groundwork

01.2 / Civic / Coastal

Te Whanga Amphitheater

Timber terraces against a living shoreline.

Location
Hauraki Gulf Foreshore
Year
2023
Scope
1.8 HA Dune Terracing
Area
1.8 ha
Procedural site model — 40° / seed 41.3

Coastal timber terrace and native dune rewilding framing intertidal marine ecology.

The brief

A car park and a boat ramp were eating the last soft dune on the eastern foreshore. The trust that owns the reserve wanted a venue; the ecology wanted the dune back. The answer turned out to be a place you sit and watch the sea do its work.

  1. Timber terrace steps stepping down toward a sheltered beach
    01Forty-two timber steps, each a seat and each a retaining wall.
  2. Intertidal sand flats with marram and spinifex at low tide
    02Dune face after two winters of spinifex broadcasting.
  3. Basalt masonry retaining edge meeting a sheltered water court
    03Retaining detail in drystack basalt, laid by hand over eleven weeks.

[ Approach ]

Four phases on the ground

  1. 01

    Read the land

    A full summer of dune transects. The blowout had already begun migrating inland at 0.8 m per year — we designed the venue so that its construction compacted exactly the strip the sand was leaving.

  2. 02

    Sketch the possibilities

    Four layouts, all rotated to keep the seaward sightline open. The chosen one nestsles into the deflation hollow so the stage sits below the natural dune crest and reads as excavated rather than placed.

  3. 03

    Grow the proposal

    The terrace is a single structural gesture: stacked timber baulks on a gravel core, no fixings, no coatings. It was detailed to be taken apart and reused if the dune needs the ground back.

  4. 04

    Steward the delivery

    Marram and spinifex were broadcast in the first autumn under a biodegradable jute mesh, then walked in. Timber was milled from storm-felled kanuka on the same coastline.

Outcome

The dune has advanced 11 m in three years and the blowout has reversed. The terrace has hosted 214 events, and the amphitheatre seats 640 people without a single piece of painted steel on site.

Dune advance
+11 m in 3 years
Seating
640
Floodable terrace
Designed to be submerged
Timber origin
Storm-felled, 6 km away

Materials

  • Storm-felled kanika baulk timber
  • Compacted shell and gravel core
  • Biodegradable jute erosion mesh
  • Marram / spinifex / coastal shrub mix

Credits

  • Lead designer — Callum Reid
  • Dune ecology — Isla Vance
  • Timber detailing — Tomas Lindqvist
Client
Te Moana Nga Whenua Trust
Collaborators
Landcare Research — Coastal

Site model / plan

The model above is generated from this drawing's height field, which is shared between the shader and the CPU so planting lands exactly on the surface.

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