The place
A bend in the Taylor
Blenheim sits with its river. The site is a quiet stretch near where the Taylor and Ōpaoa river meet, where people already walk, fish, and pause. A place of arrival and exchange for a very long time.
The site on the Taylor River, Blenheim, from above.
The community
It started with people
Marlborough's vineyards run on the hands of Pacific seasonal workers, hundreds of people who return year after year. This Pae says it plainly: you belong here. Fifty-two people turned up to the design workshop to shape it together. The form draws on the patapata, a raised platform found across the Pacific. Somewhere to sit together, off the ground, in the shade, in conversation.
Fifty-two RSE workers came to the Hortus design day. What the community drew became the Pae.
The designers
Hannah and Mason, Hatch Workshop
"The very concept of something being made to last 1,000 years is deeply contemplative, particularly in an age of short-term thinking."
Hannah and Mason work slowly and deliberately. They like simple, honest work that builds on what is already there.
Hannah and Mason, Hatch Workshop.
The material
Low-carbon concrete
Cast in a low-carbon concrete that cuts emissions by about a fifth, made to hold people and weather for centuries.
Time
Built for the year 3026
Every Pae is intended to last 1,000 years. The vines will change. The river will move. The platform will hold. Kei tūhono koe kā oho.
The timeline
- November 2024 The idea lands. Hatch Workshop suggests a Pae with and for the RSE community, and we start talking to the industry.
- December 2024 Key RSE company Hortus offer support and invite us to their end-of-summer-season festivities to start the design process with the workers.
- March 2025 Fifty-two people from around the Pacific come to a design workshop. The patapata form starts to take shape.
- April 2025 We meet with Rangitāne o Wairau to discuss the longlist of sites suggested by RSE workers. The preferred site at the confluence of the Taylor and Ōpaoa is identified.
- June 2025 Marlborough District Council's parks team approve the riverside site, subject to receiving resource consent.
- July 2025 We begin exploring low-emission concrete mixes with a research team at the University of Auckland.
- March 2026 The resource consent application is approved!
- May 2026 Hortus comes in as founding partner with the first $5,000.
- August 2026 Fundraising opens.
- December 2026 Pae installed.
The design story
Hatch Workshop sat down with the RSE community at Hortus Village - people from Vanuatu, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
The patapata Pae, a concept render by Hatch Workshop.
Talking about where people like to rest together, Benjamin from Papua New Guinea described a raised platform, about a metre off the ground, big enough for a group. He called it a patapata. The crew from Fiji knew the same thing by another name, vatavata. William from Vanuatu said structures like this lived inside the nakamal, the meeting place. Benjamin sketched it on the spot.
Community design-day sketch, Benjamin Rui.
Search any of those words online and almost nothing comes back. The form is everywhere in memory and almost nowhere in the record. It took the Pacific photo archive of a retired architect - who knew the same platform as a haus win, a "house wind" in northern PNG - to find it written down at all.
So the Blenheim Pae is not a shape drawn for a community. It is a shape the community already carried, in four languages, and gave back.
Concept design drawings, Hatch Workshop.
What your gift builds
A round platform, close to four metres across, lifted a metre off the ground, made to seat about ten people facing one another in a circle. A concrete core gives it the strength to stand for a thousand years, wrapped in an oxide finish - a technique of mineral colour buffed smooth - that grows shinier the more it is touched, so the Pae carries the mark of everyone who has sat on it. Set into the surface, objects from around the Pacific: shells, stones, beads, arranged like a map of the ocean the community crossed to get here.
Somewhere to sit together, off the ground, in conversation. A quiet stretch where people already walk and pause. Open to everyone, made for belonging.
The site on the Taylor has been chosen, with the guidance of local voices. Hortus has come in as founding partner with the first $5,000.
A texture detail.