Fisher & Paykel is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most iconic companies; a manufacturer with ninety years of heritage. F&P has positioned itself on the global stage as an elite kitchen solutions company, producing high-end appliances for international markets. Throughout this transformation, the company’s ethos has remained firmly grounded in Aotearoa, with a focus on sustainability, material innovation, and meaningful relationships with mana whenua.

The Fisher & Paykel Auckland Experience Centre is an enduring expression of place and connection created through genuine collaboration. Melding Indigenous materials, sculptural forms and gifted histories, its design represents connection to each other and the natural world.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei were engaged early in the project and remained deeply involved throughout, helping to shape the building’s materiality and gifting F&P several ancestral narratives, which found sculptural form inside the Experience Centre.

Working closely with the client, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and design studio Alt Group, Knight Associates helped craft the Experience Centre’s material language, which was an expression not only of Tāmaki Makaurau’s landscape and geology, but also of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s journey from Kaipara to their present-day whenua at Takaparawhau / Ōrākei.

In collaboration with Fisher & Paykel, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, and Alt Group