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An artist’s impression of what the University of Otago’s new 14,000sqm K-shaped residential college Te Rangihiroa will look like. IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO Work has started on the $100 million residential college on University of Otago-owned land on the corner of Albany and Forth Sts in Dunedin, with the goal of having students living there in 2023.

Main contractor Southbase Construction had begun excavating the southern end of the site and backfilling it with rock, campus development division director David Perry said.

The rock would provide a platform for a piling rig to start work in January.

The piling should be finished in the second quarter of 2021, then contractors would start construction of the main structure of the building.

While trees had been removed for the project, more would be planted as part of the landscaping plan.

McMahon Services was demolishing the University-owned music studio building on the northeastern part of the site now new studios had been built in Union St East, Mr Perry said.

Demolition should be completed in the first quarter of next year. The subsequent excavation, backfilling and piling would continue until about the second quarter of 2021.

The new college would have a total of 186 piles.

A piling rig would bore a hole then a steel casing would be inserted. Reinforcing steel would be put inside the casing and concrete would be poured, then the casing would be removed.

A test pile done to test the piling methodology, and to monitor noise and vibration, had produced less of both than anticipated, he said.

Once piling was finished, the construction of the steel and concrete 14,000sqm K-shaped structure would start.

The completed six-storey building would meet five-star Green Star sustainability criteria, which was possibly a first for a residential college in New Zealand, Mr Perry said.

The 450-bed college will include 125 bedrooms with en suites, a dining hall and kitchen, multi-functional communal spaces, offices, a reception, and college staff accommodation, Mr Perry says.

Chief operating officer Stephen Willis said the new college was the first purpose-built university-owned college in more than 50 years, to meet a forecast rise in school leavers that should boost student numbers.

It would also create a temporary excess of accommodation which will provide an opportunity for other residential colleges to be upgraded.

Peter Buck. CREDIT: Alexander Turnbull Library

Naming the new college Te Rangihiroa respects the name gifted by descendants of Otago’s distinguished first Māori graduate Te Rangihiroa (Sir Peter Buck, pictured below) because the future of the university’s existing Te Rangi Hiroa college in Castle St is uncertain, Megan Potiki, of the university’s Office of Māori Development, says.

That 125-bed college, created from Living Space accommodation in 2014, is within the new Dunedin Hospital campus.

It is believed that in 1904, Te Rangihiroa (Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama) became Otago’s first Māori graduate.

He gained bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery degrees in 1904 and started working in general practice, but a year later was appointed a medical officer to Māori.

While a Member of Parliament from 1909-1914, he finished his University of Otago doctorate of medicine in 1910. His thesis topic was medicine among Māori in ancient and modern times.

A medical officer during World War 1, he received a Distinguished Service Order after Gallipoli.

While he kept working in Māori public health after the war, he also became a recognised authority on Māori material culture.

In 1926, he became a professional anthropologist, as a research fellow at Hawaii's Bishop Museum then visiting professor at Yale University. As director of the Bishop Museum, his honorary doctorates included doctor of science from Otago, in 1937. He was knighted in 1946.

Mrs Potiki said the decision to make the name change the college’s name from from Te Rangi Hiroa to Te Rangihiroa came from the Ngāti Mutunga iwi.

They preferred to go with his personal handwritten letters in which he signed his name Te Rangihiroa.

The building will showcase Māori artwork inside and out with input from Te Rangihiroa’s Ngāti Mutunga iwi and local iwi Ngāi Tahu including:

Mrs Potiki said the building was the embodiment of Te Rangihiroa.

"In a Māori framework and worldview, naming a building after a tupuna becomes the embodiment of that ancestor and their attributes and life."

The design team, with Ngāti Mutunga and mana whenua had invested time and emotion into getting it right.

"This is a milestone for the university as it is a chance to build genuine Māori narrative from two iwi and tikanga Māori into a building.

"This is more than a building as it cements the whakapapa and relationships and honours the tupuna. This in turn is the perfect combination to manaaki our students appropriately."

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