A new home for our national treasures comes with a big cost

Wednesday, 14 August 2019

Archives NZ provides an insight into what the future purpose-build Archives NZ building will look like.

The Government will inject more than $25 million into the design phase of a new Archives NZ building in order to buttress the nation's buckling bookshelf.

New Zealand's overflowing taonga vault is set to move to what is currently a hole in the ground - the former site of Defence House, before its demise following the Kaikōura quake.

Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced the new home for Archives NZ, and the funding for its design, on Wednesday at the current Archives NZ building.

Chief archivist Richard shows Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin one of Sir Edmund Hillary's passport applications, for the passport that would take him to Nepal ahead of his ascent of Mt Everest.

Martin said the announcement was 'a really big deal' and a 'once in a lifetime opportunity' to create an archives precinct.

The current Archives NZ is packed and no longer fit for purpose.

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* Archives NZ and National Library bursting at the seams**

She wanted to see Archives NZ, the National Library and Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision 'well supported' to take on new digital opportunities, to make sure documentary and audio visual taonga and records were accessible to Kiwis 'now and in the future'.

'We need to ensure these institutions are well placed for the future and able to make a greater impact.'

The new building - which is getting $25.48m just to get through the design phase - will be next to and adjoining the National Library building. It is currently not much more than a concrete-lined hole.

When Martin came into office in 2017 she was greeted with a stark warning that Archives NZ would run out of storage space for taonga in 2020, and the National Library by 2030.

The site of the former Defence House is set to become the new Archives NZ building.

Martin had seen 'drips from ceilings into buckets' in the current 50-year-old Archives building, and said it had been 'under pressure for a long time'.

Chief archivist Richard Foy takes Minister Tracey Martin around on a tour of selected archive pieces.

The Treaty of Waitangi, the women's suffrage petition and He Whakaputanga, the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes, had since been moved into a dedicated exhibition within the national library named He Tohu.

The combined value of the heritage treasure has been estimated at $1.7 billion and counting.

The $25m would kick off two years of design and resource consent planning. It would also include planning for a new regional storage facility to take some of the pressure of Archives and the National Library.

'Having our documentary heritage stored safely in modern facilities, and our National Library and Archives New Zealand physically connected by an air-bridge, will give our unique documented history the place it deserves.'

There was also a chance that Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision would move into the new facility.