Adventure playground
New design references Ngati Tuwharetoa legend
Taupo‘s best-known and most-used playground is on the way out. In its place will be a brandnew $1.2 million destination playground with a variety of features for all ages and which references the famous Ngati Tuwharetoa legend of the battle of the mountains.
The town’s iconic playground on the Tongariro South Domain will be closed from tomorrow for a fourmonth revamp and is expected to reopen at Labour Weekend.
Located next to the Super Loo and close to the town centre and cafes, the Tongariro South Domain playground is a popular stopping point year round for visitors and is also well used by local families.
Most of the funding is coming from the council, but the 100% Lake Taupo Charitable Trust, which is winding up, is contributing its remaining bank balance of $100,000, and Towncentre Taupo and Contact Energy are each chipping in $10,000.
The battle of the mountains legend tells the story of how the mountains of the central plateau fought to marry Pihanga, with Tongariro the eventual victor.
Ngati Tuwharetoa artist Kingi Pitiroi and Bespoke Landscape Architects designed the concept for the playground, which will use colour and surface treatments to represent the mountains and a water feature representing the Whanganui River.
Pitiroi says his design brings a little of the cultural context into the playground and the use of colour made it exciting, inviting and interactive.
“For me, thinking about the battle of the mountains, it’s something that kids can connect to and something that will entrance and excite them so it’s a very fitting to use that narrative as part of the playground.
“In terms of the design, we’ve got a lot of use of very vibrant colours. We’ve got a lot of reds and yellows and oranges to represent Tongariro as the victor and to tell the story of his mana and integrity, and Pihanga in green.
“The way that we’ve faced Pihanga is she’s actually facing towards Tauhara and we’ve included Putauaki and Taranaki because of the great loss that they experienced and the waterfall of Taranaki’s tears, which is the Whanganui.”
Taupo¯ District Council project sponsor Dylan Tahau said during the playground co-design process the designers had worked closely to take on comments during the consultation, specifically the need for a local story and to incorporate some adult-child play so that parents could get involved with their children’s play. There would be a fenced-off play area for toddlers, and planting to create a barrier between the playground and the roads. The playground will also be moved further back from Tongariro St and some items from the existing playground, including the rope climbing pyramid, will be repurposed.
“The other feature is that we have water play, so the Whanganui River connecting from the Central North Island to Mt Taranaki will be our water play area and the mountains are depicted by the designs that Kingi has put on the surface treatment,” Mr Tahau said.
Landscape artist Lee Brazier, from Bespoke Landscape Architects, says the brief was to create a destination with a Taupo-specific theme that served the local community as well as being an attraction for visitors.
“For us this is a really transformational project. It has very much a local meaning and is a real game-changer from a local community perspective, but it’s also such a high-profile national project as well.”
100% Lake Taupo¯ Charitable Trust chairman David Steele said the trust wanted to make a statement by donating the remainder of its funds to the new playground.
“Up till now we’ve given out lots of little grants to lots of organisations which we love doing, helping youth and projects in Taupo over the years, but we felt that the trust had run its course in Taupo.
“We had $100,000 left over and we wanted to do something with it that would be good for Taupo.”