Some design work asks you to make things look good. This work asked something more, to make people feel safe.

The Whānau Rooms at Te Toka Tumai Auckland Hospital exist to honour te ao Māori and the tikanga that surrounds illness, death, and grief. When a loved one passes in a four-bedded ward, these are the spaces where whānau can gather, process, and be together. As the first hospital in the world to house dedicated Māori whānau spaces, the rejuvenation of these rooms carried real cultural and human weight.

This project was grounded in te ao Māori and the principles of tikanga, designing in service of whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, and the obligations of a hospital built on land gifted by Ngāti Whātua. Every design decision was made in service of that kaupapa.

The Storybook

Ara Manawa's co-design process generated years of research, insight, and human story. My role was to help the team understand how that work could be translated into a visual format, and then to design it.

The result was a 40-page storybook documenting the full rejuvenation programme: its history, its co-design process, its design decisions, and the voices of the whānau, patients, and staff who shaped it. Layout, typography, colour, and visual hierarchy were all considered in service of the story, making complex, emotionally significant content accessible, warm, and readable.

Each ward was gifted a few copies of the storybook to place in the Whānau Room’s themselves.


Environmental Artwork & Mural Installation

I led the adaptation and installation of the Paatu Maioha, the welcome mural designed by Matekitātahi Rāwiri-McDonald of TOA Architects, across the exterior walls of every rejuvenated Whānau Room. This involved translating the artwork into large-format print, fitting it to varied architectural environments across multiple wards, and overseeing its installation to ensure the integrity of the design was maintained at scale.


I also oversaw the internal landscape murals, large photographic nature scenes selected to bring a sense of the outside world into rooms with no natural light, responding directly to what whānau had told us they needed most.

Co-Design Collateral

Throughout the programme I created visual materials to support the spatial and co-design process, workshop materials, concept boards, and visual aids that helped non-designers engage meaningfully with design decisions. Good co-design needs good visual communication, and this work sat at that intersection.