Te Mānia Claims National Honours
NZIA
Stevens Lawson Architects are proud to announce that Te Mānia, a retreat located at the foot of Te Mata Peak in the Tukituki Valley, has been awarded a 2025 NZIA National Award.
Conceived as an ‘anti-house’, Te Mānia comprises three buildings dispersed across the site. Visitors move through a carefully composed landscape that highlights the maunga and the nearby river and lake, creating an experience that is both immersive and connected to its extraordinary natural setting.
At the centre, the Te Mānia Room is a sculptural, social pavilion clad in patinaed weathering steel. Its luxuriously detailed interior of dark timber, stone, and angled planes frames views and creates dynamic spatial experiences. In contrast, two semi-buried bedroom sanctuaries retreat into the hillside, their serpentine concrete forms and light interiors offering cocoon-like privacy.
The NZIA jury praised the project as:
““Idiosyncratic and assertive… The pivotal social pavilion is extroverted and sculptural, its pinwheel of apertures frame and connecting with the landscape. Clad in patinaed weathering steel, it encloses a luxuriously detailed interior… In contrast the sleeping houses are recessive and serpentine… The project redefines the retreat typology.”
Te Mānia demonstrates how architecture and landscape can be entwined to create a grounded yet transcendent experience, balancing bold social spaces with intimate retreats.
Read more from the NZIA here.
