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Bowen House, viewed from the Beehive walkway

Bowen House is a 22-storey office building on the corner of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street, Wellington, New Zealand, that was leased by the New Zealand Parliament to house some members of Parliament and government staff.[1] It is now known as Te Iho and houses various government agencies.

History

[edit]

Bowen House replaced a brick building of the same name on this site, opened in 1931 and demolished in the 1980s.[2][3]

The new Bowen House was originally to be known as Kingsway.[4][5] The building was designed by Warren and Mahoney architects. Construction began in 1988 and was completed in 1990. It was leased by the New Zealand Parliament from 1991 to 2020.[6] It was once owned by Government Property Services, which was privatised as Capital Properties New Zealand by a National–New Zealand First coalition government in 1998. In 2012, AMP Capital sold the building to Farhad Vladi [de], a German property investor.[7]

Bowen House contained offices for the smaller political parties, select committee staff, and some ministers and their support staff.[1] It was connected to the Executive Wing (the Beehive) of the Parliament Buildings by an underground passage containing travelators under Bowen Street. Ministers moving between buildings on the travelators could not avoid journalists, who used the opportunity to ask ministers questions.[7][8] Bowen House was part of the parliamentary security system, and the government was the only tenant in the building.

Some high-rise buildings in Wellington suffered damage in the November 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, notably Statistics House where some floors partially collapsed after separating from the walls.[9] In December 2016, Wellington City Council ordered that building inspections be carried out in about 80 buildings including Bowen House. (By 2022 the Council had identified 150 buildings at possible risk.)[10] The buildings affected by the order were all multi-storey, constructed of reinforced concrete with precast hollow core concrete slab floors.[11]

In May 2019 engineers began investigating Bowen House,[6] and in October 2019 Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard announced that engineers did not believe Bowen House was fully safe and that staff would be temporarily relocated so that the building could be strengthened.[12] By February 2020, plans were underway to shift 600 staff after the building was declared to only reach 40% of the new building code.[13] In 2021 Precinct Properties bought Bowen House for $92 million, with plans to earthquake-strengthen and redevelop the building.[14] Strengthening was completed during 2023.[15]

The building reopened as Te Iho in 2025, providing offices for 10 government bodies.[16] Due to aging parts and reduced foot traffic, the travelators were decommissioned in August 2025, with the passage remaining open to unassisted foot traffic.[8]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 Small, Vernon (11 July 2015). "Parliament precinct eyes office revamp". The Press. p. A2. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  2. ↑ "Bowen House passed in". The Press. 12 November 1980.
  3. ↑ "The War Memorial corner [photograph]". The Dominion. 23 October 1931.
  4. ↑ Kernohan, David (1989). Wellington's New Buildings. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0864730853.
  5. ↑ "Parliamentary site attacked". The Press. 10 January 1989.
  6. 1 2 Vance, Andrea (14 May 2019). "Engineers checking if Parliament's Bowen House is earthquake prone". Stuff. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  7. 1 2 Schouten, Hank (15 December 2012). "German investor buys part of complex". Stuff. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  8. 1 2 Cooke, Henry; Laughton, Harriet (10 October 2025). "An end of an era as Parliament's travelators decommissioned". The Post. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
  9. ↑ "2017 Statistics House Investigation Report | Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment". www.mbie.govt.nz. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  10. ↑ Fuller, Piers; Green, Kate (26 May 2022). "Up to 150 Wellington buildings may share construction flaw deemed quake risk". Stuff. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  11. ↑ Devlin, Collette (20 December 2016). "Owners of 80 Wellington CBD buildings ordered to do more invasive testing". Stuff. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  12. ↑ "Wellington building housing MPs' offices to be vacated for earthquake strengthening". Newshub. Archived from the original on 27 October 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  13. ↑ "Quake risk: Work under way to relocate Bowen House politicians, staff". RNZ. 19 February 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  14. ↑ Steeman, Marta (18 June 2021). "Precinct Properties buys Bowen House for $92 million and taps investors for $250m to redevelop it, and reduce debt". Stuff. Retrieved 2 January 2023.
  15. ↑ Delivering on strategy: Annual report 2023 (PDF). Precinct Properties New Zealand Limited. 2023. p. 13.
  16. ↑ Manch, Thomas (14 April 2025). "Bowen House, once home to MPs, reopens as Te Iho". The Post. Retrieved 25 February 2026.

41°16′45.68″S 174°46′35.91″E / 41.2793556°S 174.7766417°E / -41.2793556; 174.7766417

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