Te Rangihīroa College

Residential colleges are a big part of first year at university. When the original Te Rangihīroa College, home to 125 students, was earmarked for the long-term Dunedin Hospital redevelopment, the University of Otago needed to replace those beds and add capacity for the future. The result is a 14,000 square metre college designed by Jasmax, with 300 rooms and 150 ensuites, dining, study and social spaces, and accessibility built in from the start, from bathrooms for disabled students to vibrating alarms for the hearing-impaired.

The college honours Te Rangihīroa, Sir Peter Buck, the first Māori graduate in medicine from a New Zealand university, and that whakapapa runs through the building. Worked through with Ngāti Mutunga and Kāi Tahu, its four accommodation wings radiate from a central heartline, its blue façade panels carry the kaokao pattern for the protective ribs of ancestors, and his name sits on the building in his own left-handed script.