On 8 July 2025, the official opening and dawn blessing of Te Rua Archives marked the beginning of a new era for our country’s documentary heritage. As Aotearoa’s new national archives facility, this world class building will house and protect some of our most treasured records. From Treaty documents to personal letters, maps and digital collections, now and for generations to come.
It was a proud moment for us at TwentyTwo. We’ve been walking alongside the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga and the National Library of New Zealand on this journey since 2018. From site selection and development agreements through to commercial negotiations, lease structuring and governance, this has been one of those once in a career projects for our Managing Director, Dean Croucher and a rewarding experience for our wider Advisory team.
“It was an honour, on a cold but perfect winter’s morning to attend the dawn blessing for Te Rua. Congratulations to Rob Stevens and the entire team involved over many years, it’s an outstanding project and one we’ve been proud to contribute to,” says Dean.
15 Years in the making, built for the future
The idea of a purpose-built national archives facility was first raised more than 15 years ago. Eight years ago, the planning and procurement process began in earnest. Now the building stands tall on the former Freyberg House site in Wellington, the same site where Dean was involved in development discussions as far back as the late 1990s.
Te Rua is the most seismically resilient public building in New Zealand. Built by LT McGuinness and co-designed by Warren and Mahoney and Tihei Ltd, it features 36 triple-pendulum base isolators (the largest ever installed in the country), piles that go 55m deep and walls with rubber joints designed to flex with ground movement. The eight-storey building weighs the equivalent of a 30 storey tower and is engineered to protect its irreplaceable contents during major earthquakes.
Inside, the archives feature climate controlled, windowless floors with 775,000kg of shelving, colour coded for wayfinding and designed to withstand both time and tectonics. Every detail, from leak detection and smoke sensing to security and storage has been designed to meet the highest international archival standards.
Honouring the past while embracing innovation
Beyond the engineering feats, Te Rua is a powerful statement about the role of our nation’s memory in shaping our future.
As Chief Archivist Anahera Morehu described, symbolic items from the Mulgrave Street archives have been placed on each level of the new building to “warm the space” for the collections still to come, a poignant reminder of the human stories embedded in these records.
The building’s design also honours mana whenua, with its facade telling the story of Taranaki Whānui and Te Ātiawa, descendants of the Pipitea whenua on which the building now sits. A two level bridge connects the new archives to the National Library, creating a unified campus for public memory, conservation and digitisation.
A testament to collaboration
This has been a project defined by perseverance, leadership and long-term partnership. The project team, including the DIA, Archives NZ, project directors, designers, engineers, contractors and advisors, worked collaboratively through complexity and change to deliver a facility that sets a new benchmark for public infrastructure.
For TwentyTwo, this was a rare opportunity to be involved across the full life of a project, from the early feasibility stages and investment logic mapping, through commercial structuring, to governance and delivery oversight.
“Rob Stevens and his team have done a remarkable job steering this project to completion,” Dean adds. “It’s been a long journey, but one that’s delivered a facility New Zealand can be proud of and one that will outlast us all.”
