Early history of the site
Whakatāne, on the banks of the Whakatāne River, is the principal town of the Eastern Bay of Plenty area. The site of the town has a long history of Māori occupation; many of the Māori inhabitants of the Whakatāne area today are descendants of the people of the Mataatua migration waka, who intermingled with the people living in the Bay of Plenty prior its arrival to form the many hapū of Ngāti Awa, Tūhoe, Whakatōhea and other iwi. The name of the town itself derives from the call made by one of the female occupants of Mataatua, Wairaka, the daughter of its captain Toroa, while she saved the waka after it had come adrift.
As recognised by James Cook when he visited and renamed the area in 1769, the Bay of Plenty was a place of significant natural resources. The large area bounded by the Tarawera River in the west and the Whakatāne River in the east, with the Rangitāiki River spreading between, creating the great Rangitāiki Swamp. The swamp was traditionally divided between local hapū and provided crucial food sources for them, as well as places of sacred sites, settlement and agriculture on the higher ground. Between the edge of the swamp and the coast were large sand hills; in the harbour rises the volcanic island of Moutohorā (Whale) Island.
Although chiefs of the area signed the Treaty of Waitangi at Kakahoroa, at what was to become Whakatāne township, in 1840, near the tapu rock of Pohatūroa, the area did not undergo significant European settlement until after the Crown’s raupatu (confiscation) of large tracts of Bay of Plenty land in 1866. These confiscations included the taking of most of the land owned by the Ngāti Awa hapū, done to punish perceived rebellion by Ngāti Awa against the Crown the previous year. After the murder of Crown agent James Te Mautaranui Fulloon in July 1865, some Ngāti Awa hapū had used Rangitāiki swamp and its lagoons and swamp island pā, including Otamauru, a strongly pallisided pā thought to have been one to two kilometres south of the eventual site of Whakatāne Airport, as a natural fortress.
Following the confiscations, which had devastating effects on the local iwi, the land for Whakatāne township itself was divided up and allocated to military settlers. The town developed only gradually, and in 1875 it had only two stores, two hotels, a flax mill and a school. In 1890 the crown still retained the ownership of 90% of the land in the wider area. The area where the airport was later located was slowly settled by Pākehā from the late nineteenth century and became known as Thornton; settlers, many from Canterbury, moved to the area particularly for flaxmilling. The Rangitāiki Swamp was drained in the early twentieth century, a major undertaking that began in earnest in 1910 and continued for many decades, completely altering the landscape and encouraging greater settlement of the area, now known as the Rangitāiki Plains. Dairying farms boomed and Whakatāne prospered; the town became a borough in 1917. Timber and pulp and paper began to make a significant contribution to the regional economy, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. Tourism, built on the Eastern Bay of Plenty’s temperate climate, summer resorts and improved transport links, also became a more important part to the regional economy in those decades.
Aviation at Whakatāne and the establishment of an Airport
The first plane which landed at Whakatāne, in this case on the harbour, was carrying the Catholic bishop of Auckland, Rt. Rev Dr H W Cleary, visiting his flock in 1920. One of the first flights of an aircraft built in New Zealand took off from nearby Ōhope Beach in 1930. The idea of an aerodrome for Whakatāne was first discussed by the Whakatane Borough Council in the early 1930s, and possible sites were investigated. The outbreak of World War Two put plans on hold, and the Controller of Civil Aviation wrote to the council to say that the ‘there is no necessity at present for an aerodrome in Whakatāne’. Undaunted, the Whakatane County and Borough Councils set up an Aerodrome Committee in 1944 and continued to suggest sites. One of those, an area of Crown land to the west of the Whakatane Golf Club, between the Orini River and the coast, was put onto short-term leases to local farmers to allow the option of using this land as the aerodrome in the future. The site was undulating sand hill country covered with fern and lupin, and had presumably been owned by the Crown since the confiscations. In 1954, the land was about to be allocated to ex-servicemen settlers; the aerodrome committee realised its preferred site might slip away so asked the Minister of Lands to officially set aside the site, arguing that the increasing population and economic development of the area justified an aerodrome. A block of 572 acres was finally reserved as an aerodrome in 1958, vested in the Whakatane County Council. The development of a grass airfield was started the same year, but not officially opened, for light aircraft only, until 1960. An agreement was reached in 1961 for the government to share half the cost of the development of the aerodrome, with the county and borough councils a quarter each. The airstrip was sealed and lengthened in 1962, to provide facilities for the larger DC3 aircraft. The National Airways Corporation (NAC), New Zealand’s state-owned national domestic airline of New Zealand from 1947 until 1978, began flying from Whakatāne in November 1962, and its privately owned competitor, South Pacific Airways, followed suit a few weeks later. The runway was extended in 1968 to accommodate Friendship aircraft.
A modest terminal building was built in 1960, when only 450 passengers used the terminal a year. This building was extended in stages in the following six years, but it struggled to cope with the marked increased in passengers; by 1966, passenger movements had reached 12,000. It was supplemented by a mobile ‘control tower’: a van painted with black and white squares.
Planning a new terminal
The Airport Committee proposed a complete replacement of the terminal building in 1970. The government eventually agreed to the proposal provided the project was funded half by the government, and quarter each by the Whakatane County and Borough Councils. At that time all government buildings were either designed by the Ministry of Works, or by an architect approved by the Government Architect, and plans for airports needed the approval of the Ministries of Works and Transport. At first, the local Airport Committee indicated no real preference for which architect to use, and submitted a list of three local firms for approval. At the last minute, however, the County Engineer, A. W. Tassell, asked for the name of a fourth architect to be submitted for approval: that of Wellingtonian Roger Walker. Tassell had been introduced to Walker and his work, particularly that of the Wellington Club, and wrote ‘I think this man would produce a modern attractive building which would appeal to the travelling public … the Committee is desirous of building a modern terminal building which has character befitting the “sunshine town” of the North Island’. Whakatāne and the Eastern Bay of Plenty was determined at that time to ‘put itself on the map’ in the competition for tourist dollars, as the tourism industry began to take off after many years in the doldrums, reinvigorated by the arrival of wide-bodied jet planes in New Zealand in 1970.
Walker (1942- ) had trained at the Auckland University School of Architecture and made his name with his ambitious and distinctive design for the Wellington Club on The Terrace, while working for the architectural firm of Calder, Fowler and Styles. He had recently left that firm and set up on his own. The airport project was his new firm’s first commercial project, begun when Walker was only 29 years old. He was influenced by Japanese Metabolism, as well as local colonial and Victorian architecture, and his buildings were a deliberate response to, as he has said, ‘creeping blandness everywhere. People had to be shown that there were achievable alternatives. And, I suppose, to demonstrate that effectively, the alternatives had to be somewhere outrageous’. Walker developed a highly distinctive architectural vocabulary early in his career which has spanned both his commercial and domestic work, using accretions of small spaces, mixtures of roof shapes, colours, materials and textures, and the juxtaposition of triangular, rectangular and circular shapes: a ‘compulsive complicator’, as he has been called.
When the Ministry of Works indicated that any of the proposed architects would be acceptable the County Council rapidly confirmed Walker’s appointment, in March 1971. During the design phase, Walker was required to defend the design for the terminal against those, including the Ministry of Works, who thought it too unusual, or not flexible enough to allow for future alterations. Walker wrote in defence of his design ‘As you are doubtless aware a “conventional” terminal building as implied in the MOW report is precisely what the Whakatane Airport Committee did not want, otherwise they would have engaged one of the hundreds of consultants in this country capable of producing such a structure. There is not necessarily a conflict between “character” in a building, and flexibility, and I hope that the MOW can recognise this in this building’. As well as trying to make an impression on the tourists arriving in the region, the tower also referenced distant Moutohorā (Whale Island), the only distinctive geographical feature in the flat landscape. He also said that the flat landscape surrounding it necessitated features that would make it stand out and create a reaction.
Despite the Ministry of Work’s concerns, the Whakatane County and Borough Councils remained loyal to Walker’s design: Tassell wrote that the councils were unanimous that they ‘were not prepared to adopt the conventional type of building favoured by the Ministry of Works … our Committee wishes to erect a terminal which will be original as well as functional’. The Council also justified the increased cost estimate of the building by emphasising the growing economic confidence of the region, and the growth of the tourism and pulp and paper industries.
Walker did not make any significant changes in the face of these concerns, although he did amend the position of the toilets, in order to allow for future extensions, and altered the staircase to the tower over fire escape concerns. An important decision made during the design process was the inclusion on the top floor of an airport control room, mitigating the need for a separate building, and another deck was added on the west side of this room allowing for an additional exit from the top floor. These required minor amendments to the original plans, along with a new equipment room on the ground floor, which was built semi-detached from the building, but in the style of the original design. In-fill panelling has been used in places to allow further extensions if necessary. Local government’s optimism for quick progress on the project proved overly optimistic; permission to go ahead made slow progress through central government processes. While negotiations were still on-going, a small section of neighbouring land was acquired under the Public Works Act to provide room for the terminal, and carpark and roading improvements were made. Eventually in September 1972 the Ministry of Transport, although admitting the unusual design probably made the building slightly more expensive, assured its Minister that the building was flexible enough to take ground floor alterations in the future, and he gave the project permission to go ahead. It is said that Percy Allen, the Minister of Works and the local MP for Bay of Plenty, had a hand in intervening in his ministry’s decision to allow the building to go ahead, although he confessed when he first saw it ‘I didn’t like anything about the building’.
Construction of the Terminal
Construction by the local firm Steens Bros began in October 1972 and, after facing delays because of shortages of building materials, finished in December 1973. The building was opened by Allen in May 1974. The reaction from the public and the architectural community was immediate. A newspaper editorial after its opening reported on reactions from locals: ‘Disneyland’, ‘something out of Grimm’s fairy stories’, and ‘an ugly blooming thing’, while conversely Allen claimed that travellers were taking flights from Auckland to Wellington via Whakatāne just to see the building. The head of the NAC, despite the organisation’s earlier reservations about the building, said it was ‘the most attractive terminal in New Zealand’.
The building was also welcomed by both the architectural community and tourism industry; it was illustrated on the front cover of Building Progress, in August 1975, and was also a recipient of a Tourism Design Award in 1975, when it was called ‘excitingly different’. Since then the building has been frequently included in publications about the history of architecture of New Zealand: Peter Shaw writes that the building is ‘A shock for both tourists and travelling New Zealander’s, the building’s practical limitations are outweighed by its fancifulness. The exposed timber roof structure, perilous circular stair and cottage-like rooms firmly contradict passenger’s expectations of what an airport should be’. It is also included in the book Long live the modern, an evaluation of New Zealand’s most important modern buildings and was described as the “essence of tourist architecture” in Walker’s biography.
As Andrew Barrie has observed, Walker’s ‘unique architectural vocabulary that would define his work for years appeared almost fully formed in his earliest projects’. The airport was just at the beginning of Walker’s long career, and many aspects of the terminal building were echoed in later designs. Walker went on to design many homes, his work particularly suited to the difficult terrain of Wellington’s hill suburbs, and commercial projects. Other tourism-related projects include the Waitomo Cave Reception Centre (since destroyed by fire), hotels for The Hotel Corporation including Queenstown (1989) and Wairākei (1980-81), and the Kiwi House at Rainbow Springs, Rotorua. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Walker, with his Wellington compatriot Ian Athfield, became the first New Zealand architects to become internationally celebrated. Walker continues to practice in Wellington, was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honour for services to architecture and in 2016 was awarded the New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal.
Alterations and ongoing use of the Terminal
The Whakatāne Airport building has had few alterations since construction, although some of the original doors and windows, including the large round window facing the runway, and the rounded timber glazed doors leading to the runway have been replaced. A disabled toilet was installed in 1982. The deck attached to the mezzanine floor was closed in and the open baggage handling area enclosed with garage doors in 1991. The canopy to the covered pedestrian entry was rebuilt in 1998 to a different profile and height than the original. The building retains its original colour scheme, and many original lights and other fittings. A full roof replacement occurred in the 2012/13 year.
In 2011, when the Whakatāne Airport’s new Master Plan appeared to indicate that the terminal building could be at risk of demolition, a number of architects and architectural historians rapidly came to the defence of the building. In 2013 the building received an NZIA Bay of Plenty Enduring Architecture Award, and in 2017 was included as a heritage building in the Whakatāne district plan in 2017.
Whakatāne airport continues to be managed as a joint venture between the Whakatāne District Council and the Ministry of Transport. In 2015 Air New Zealand ceased their flights to Whakatāne, to the concern of the local community, but other companies immediately replaced the service, and the airport continues to cater for both commercial and recreational flights, including to surrounding tourist attractions such as Whakaari (White Island), and houses helicopter and other commercial operations.
