What will Wellington's new central public library look like?

Closed since March 2019 after a seismic assessment found it was a threat to life if a serious earthquake occurred, Wellington's new central public library in Te Ngākau Civic Square was unveiled this morning.

Redeveloped at an estimated cost of $217.6 million, it is set to open to the public next March once the internal fit-out is complete.

The library has been gifted the te reo Māori name Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, meaning 'a window to the wider world', and the new design offers exactly that.

While before you felt somewhat submerged at ground level, the ground floor of the new library has literally been raised, and there are windows everywhere, opening the space to the city, the sea and the sky.

Additional entranceways, gangways and walkways make it feel part of Te Ngākau Civic Square and a generous, warm civic space to gather in its own right, with more views of the cityscape than were previously available.

This Saturday, on a beautiful, still morning in the Capital, a rededication at dawn was led on behalf of mana whenua by tohunga of Te Āti Awa and Taranaki Whānui, with uri (descendants) of Taranaki .

The event was a rededication with what mana whenua call a 'tohi tāngaengae' – a reawakening ceremony, giving mauri (life force) and breathing new energy into the space to help transform it from the old to the new, the Wellington City Council says.

The redesign has been led by artist and designer Rangi Kipa of Tihei Design in partnership with Athfield Architects, who completed the original library. Zac Athfield, son of the late principal architect Ian Athfield, has led the company's involvement.

In its key structural elements and with the retention of many design elements, Te Matapihi still feels like the library of old - just opened up.

Libraries are like community living rooms, and attending the ceremony felt like returning home after a six-year absence.

While much of the shell of the original award-winning 1991 library remains, for earthquake-strengthening, many of its concrete walls have been removed, bringing in more natural light.

Kipa said he wanted to create a space where one could "feel the presence of mana whenua". Guided by tetaiao (the wonder and awe of the natural world), he wanted to "bring nature back into the city".

This is evident in the light and colour in the space, aided by the new art and design work.

Three mana whenua artists have been commissioned to create what Kipa calls "the rawa" - the inbuilt art and design.

They are senior Māori artist Darcy Nicholas, artist and weaver Ngahina Hohaia , and artist and musician Wiremu Barriball.

While weaving is a clear visual motif in the building cladding, inside Hohaia and Barriball's colourful and dramatic works refer to threads of mycelium and fungi, connectors of the natural world.

In the coming months, the new artwork that is likely to get the most public attention, though, is a giant reproduction of a poem on the building's exterior, at the Victoria Street threshold of Te Ngākau.

Here, Kipa has crafted the lines of 'Brown Optimism' - a poem by influential Māori writer JC Sturm that was first published in the Otago University student magazine Critic in 1947.

Lost for 70 years, this rediscovered poem was written by Sturm when she was a university student. Written in iambic pentameter, it has a rare political stridency for its time.

"For brown must learn from white, the rules to make him equal partner in the game they play; And white must cease to trample underfoot these dark leaves of the Polynesian tree", Sturm wrote.

Behind the poem's lines, Kipa has carved an image of a young makomako tree, whose serrated leaves echo how the poet's words themselves have "teeth", Kipa says.

Better known by her married name Jacquie Baxter, Sturm was the wife of acclaimed poet James K Baxter and one of the first Māori librarians in the country. From 1972, she was the principal New Zealand Room librarian for Wellington.

The rededication of Wellington's central library comes at a time of renewed protest over the fate of the nearby City to Sea Bridge - a collaboration between Māori and Pākehā architects whose construction was also a watershed cultural moment for the city.

Last year, the Wellington Council voted to demolish the bridge due to the high costs of earthquake strengthening, and this month, a judicial review of that decision was rejected.

This week, the council paused the demolition of the City to Sea Bridge to await recommendations from the government's earthquake-prone building and seismic risk management review.

Mark Amery is the co-presenter of RNZ's Culture 101. He is a former member of the Wellington City Council’s Public Art Panel.