Destination Kāwaroa

Destination Kāwaroa is a new intergenerational learning and play space on the Ngāmotu foreshore. TGM was tasked with developing innovative signage to support and enhance the site’s different learning and play experiences and to celebrate the area’s culture, heritage, and ecology.

We collaborated with mana whenua, local artists and subject specialists to create a series of distinctivelearning stations. These museum-style interpretive panels provide rich, often interactive or hands-on learning opportunities, linked to the New Zealand Curriculum and the people, creatures and history of the whenua.

The site and brief presented practical challenges for TGM to overcome. Accessibility was a key consideration. The physical stations and their content were carefully designed to be accessible and engaging for children and adults, including neurodivergent and differently abled people.

Several of the stations required engineering solutions and mechanical components. As well as looking beautiful and performing effortlessly, the signs needed to be robust enough to withstand the wild west coast weather, the unwelcome attention of late-night visitors and the daily assault of hundreds of excited children engaging with them exactly as intended!