About Tohu Heritage New Zealand
Tohu Heritage New Zealand
The Name
Tohu is a Māori word for sign, mark, and enduring record. For centuries, tohu guided Māori in reading the natural world: indicators of change, evidence of what was, proof that something mattered.
We borrowed that word deliberately, because heritage sites are tohu too. They are marks left in the landscape, evidence of the people and stories that shaped Aotearoa. And like all signs, they can be lost: to time, to neglect, to adaptive reuse, to the slow erosion of memory.
Tohu exists to make those marks permanent.
Immersive Heritage Documentation
Tohu is New Zealand's first platform for immersive 3D documentation of heritage places. We create detailed, photorealistic 3D models of heritage sites that anyone can explore on a phone, a tablet, or a desktop browser. No specialist equipment, and nothing to download. Just the building, as it stands, in full detail.
Every capture is carried out voluntarily, at no cost to the owners and custodians of these places, and processed and published publicly the same way. Each site includes interpretive information about the history, significance, and stories of the place, and can be explored in virtual and augmented reality. The goal is not only preservation but presence: making heritage sites feel alive and within reach of every New Zealander, wherever they are.
Clark House, Hobsonville
The platform launches with Clark House in Hobsonville, a Heritage New Zealand Category 1 listed place and one of Auckland's most significant early colonial structures. Clark House is our proof of what Tohu can do, and an invitation to every custodian, council, and community group in Tāmaki Makaurau to imagine what comes next.
Auckland has 2,446 protected heritage places. Four out of five Aucklanders live within one kilometre of one. Most of those places have never been experienced beyond a photograph or a text record. Tohu is here to change that.
Community and Institutional Partnership
Tohu does not decide which heritage places matter. That knowledge belongs to the people and institutions who have protected and cared for these sites for generations. This work only matters if it's chosen well. We're building relationships with Auckland Council's Heritage Unit, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, iwi authorities, and heritage societies: the people and institutions who understand which places carry the most significance for their communities.
If you care for a heritage place and want to explore what Tohu can offer, we would like to hear from you.
Built for Permanence
Tohu is built and hosted in Aotearoa New Zealand, on infrastructure designed for long-term public access. Every 3D model on the platform is a permanent public record, freely accessible to all. The models and their content are protected under copyright. Reproduction, download, or commercial use of imagery or video taken from the platform is not permitted without written consent. See our Copyright & Use Policy for full terms.
Founder
Tohu Heritage is founded and run by Thiago Amaral, based in Auckland. His background is in visual technology, brought to heritage work out of a concern that documented history can become fragmented over time: scattered across private archives, hard drives, and formats that may not stay accessible. Tohu Heritage is one response to that risk, and a reframing of how a heritage place can be experienced online in the first place. Rather than a photograph or a video, each site becomes a navigable 3D space, letting anyone move through a place and stop at the details that matter, on their own terms.
Every place documented stays hosted here permanently and freely, in the open, meant to remain accessible rather than depend on any one archive or format. That openness carries an educational purpose too: the same record available to a site's owners and custodians is there for schools, universities, and researchers to draw on, in whatever way serves their own study of a place. As the archive grows, that direction is shaped in conversation with the people and institutions closest to these places, echoing how sites themselves are chosen.
Contact
We welcome conversations with custodians, councils, researchers, educators, and anyone who believes heritage places deserve to be experienced, not just preserved.
