Standing on the former Pipitea Pā beside Parliament, the building had to hold a stable archival environment while moving freely in a major earthquake. It sits on 38 triple-pendulum base isolators that let it shift up to 1.3 metres, with services detailed to flex across the isolation plane and keep running, all built to 150 percent of the New Building Standard and designed to avoid collapse in a 1-in-1,800-year earthquake. RCP ran the project in a model-first environment using Revizto and BIM, resolving thousands of clashes before installation and cutting weekly coordination time by around 90 percent, and managed a completion tracker that took the scramble out of handing over a facility this complex.
Te Rua reached completion in 2025 and connects to the National Library through the two-level Te Hono bridge, forming the Te Kahu heritage campus. Shaped by a te ao Māori worldview through DIA's co-design partnership with Taranaki Whānui Te Āti Awa and Tihei, it carries the pā's pipi beds and kūmara mounds into its plaza and turns hapū names and Rangi Kipa's sculptural work toward Parliament. Because DIA leases rather than owns the building, a digital twin lets its conservators and maintenance teams monitor and adjust the archival environment in real time. Built to a 5 Green Star rating and among the most seismically resilient buildings in the country, it gives Archives New Zealand and the National Library a shared home built to hold the national record for generations.
Awards
2026 Commercial Project Awards, National Category Winner, CARTERS Commercial Project
