wharepuni

1. (New Zealand) A large building in Maori communities for communal sleeping or for group meetings; a meeting house.Examples: "The dwellings of the chiefs are surrounded with enclosures of pole-fences; and the Whares and Wharepunis, some of them exhibiting very fine specimens of the Maori order of architecture, are ornamented with grotesque wood-carvings."; "A notable recent event was the construction of a fourth wharepuni. These wharepuni are in themselves fully fledged meeting-houses, although the decoration inside is simple, in accordance with their function as dormitories."; "Wharepuni increased greatly in size to the kinds of dimensions that would become common in the twentieth century."New-Zealand