Located on the gateway site of the Victoria Quarter precinct and opposite Victoria Park, Mainzeal House will be a striking addition to the urban fabric. The new home for Mainzeal’s Auckland office will be surrounded by heritage buildings, commercial, residential, and mixed use. The building occupies an important corner site and is highly visible upon approach to the central city from the West.

The transparent main entry and large format retail space on the ground floor continues the active edge along the bounding streets. A ribbon-like stone clad entry frames the ground floor gallery lobby space.

The refurbishment of this existing building maintains the primary structure. A new architectural glazed skin has been applied to the curved facade of the building. This tectonic facade incorporates Low Iron & Low E clear glazing and fixed aluminium blades, creating a vertical patterning to the curved facade.

The building’s sustainable elements is designed to achieve a ‘5 Green Star’ office building rating for both the base build and the interior fit-out.

The building seeks to strengthen the urban design principles of the area by creating a high-amenity, mixed-use environment – a welcomed addition to Auckland.

The $1.4 billion Waterview Connection project will complete Auckland’s Western Ring Route. The project involves almost five kilometres of new motorway including two parallel tunnels, 2.4 kilometres in length, and interchanges to connect to the Southwestern Motorway at Mt Roskill and to the Northwestern Motorway at Great North Road. It will be the largest, most expensive and most complex roading project ever undertaken in New Zealand.

The Western Ring Route will provide a 48-kilometre alternative to State Highway 1 and the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Construction will start in November with the project expected to be completed by the end of 2016.

Part of the Well-Connected Alliance Team (Comprising NZTA, Fletcher Construction, McConnell Dowell Constructors, Parsons Brinkerhoff NZ, Beca Infrastructure, Tonkin and Taylor, Boffa Miskell and Obayashi Corporation), Warren and Mahoney is responsible for the architectural components of the project including the ventilation stacks, egress structures, vehicular and pedestrian bridges and associated tunnel buildings.

Tender Design Concept

Inspired by the aesthetic forms of Obsidian (volcanic glass) the original design for the tunnel's ventilation stack has focussed on creating a slender form of elegance and beauty. Its full sculptural appearance is appreciated on approach from the motorway as the stake’s slanted form extends down to the motorway serving as the portal’s dividing wall. 

The notion of extruded boxes shifting in and out of the tunnel express traffic movement through the tunnel, its glazed ends revealing and celebrating the tunnel’s mechanical and servicing operations. Glazed patterning to offer detail features internally fixed aluminium louvres creating depth and detail to the glazed edges.

2 Cathedral Square will occupy the most prominent site in the Christchurch CBD at the southern edge of Cathedral Square and at the heart of the city’s financial and banking precinct.

The new building is designed to occupy this gateway site with the scale, dignity and timeless quality that the location deserves.  With these values in mind, the materials, finishes and systems selected for the building will be of the highest quality and the structural systems are developed for a new level of resilience and safety. Facades utilise green slate cladding in combination with high performance glazing systems to achieve a real sense of permanence, quality and status while also delivering a very low maintenance solution.

2 Cathedral Square will be the first of a new generation of premium medium-rise office buildings providing A-Grade accommodation in Christchurch.

The building will also represent a new generation of Christchurch City properties designed to directly reflect the needs of contemporary commercial tenants, including high stud, flexible floor plates, high levels of natural light and outlook, and state-of-the-art mechanical systems.

All floor plates are designed to maximise fit-out flexibility and minimise the cost of change as tenant needs change. Each floor plate achieves a 2.8 metre floor-to-ceiling height while minimising the disruption of core and structural elements. Views and natural day-lighting are optimised without compromising comfort within the working environment

The building is designed to achieve a green star rating and to reduce energy costs throughout the life of the project.  With a combination of high performance facades and chilled beam air-conditioning systems, this building will be one of the most advanced new commercial properties in New Zealand.

The Rural Bank Building will replace its predecessor, destroyed in the Christchurch Earthquake of February 2011. The building is designed to satisfy the requirements of tenants requiring A-Grade office space at the centre of the rebuilt city. The floor plates are therefore regular and flexible, able to accommodate both open plan and cellular fit-outs with equal ease while also providing excellent exposure to natural light and premium views of Cathedral Square, Christchurch’s most significant civic space. Inter-floor connectivity is provided for through a full-height atrium that connects all levels, allowing for multi-level tenants to interconnect with ease.

The building also takes seriously its responsibility as a ‘citizen’ in the reconstruction of Christchurch’s commercial infrastructure. Its strong rhythm of concrete columns, a clear and open grid of windows, the stone cladding of its shear core and the ordered overall arrangement of its parts all contribute to the building’s sense of strength and permanence. A generous through-site-link connects Gloucester Street to Cathedral Square, maximising retail frontages while also ensuring that the building will be seen as an essential part of the daily life of the inner city.

The new Rural Bank building will be one of the first new NZGBC 5-Star rated buildings to be erected in the ‘post-earthquake’ era, utilising a variety of sustainability strategies to ensure the building is both comfortable and very efficient in use.

As a result of community input following a limited competition in 2005 Warren and Mahoney was invited to join Boffa Miskell and Alan Reay Consultants to assist with the design and delivery of the new outdoor spaces and commercial buildings proposed for Picton’s long awaited (and much debated) waterfront redevelopment project.

In response to public consultation and a clear instruction from the community for local identity and village scale, the designs for the three commercial buildings occupying the perimeter of the new square evolved in conjunction with Boffa Miskell’s overall open spaces design of the square and waterfront.

The three buildings are variations on a theme. Covered outdoor circulation zones, articulated by white painted steel veranda posts and fascias, are positioned in front of deep-set glazed shopfronts. Zinc roofed volumes of varying geometries are set behind the colonnaded circulation routes, echoing a language of marine sheds of memory, with dark boarded cedar cladding to exterior walls. The modular structural setout is expressed by intermediate white steel columns introduced into the line of the dark boarding at portal centres.

The three new buildings are modest in scale and budget, but serve to anchor the overall composition and frame the directed views from Wellington Street to the harbour, so long obscured by decaying industrial buildings, and until recently unavailable to the public. The new buildings replace existing structures of varying quality and vintage, allowing the incumbent tenants to remain on the site and continue business on the upgraded waterfront.

In response to a difficult site, tapering in plan and steeply contouring rock escarpment, the house anchors the rock while adhering the contours. Garaging addresses the street, separated from living by a half-level, and paired about an entry sequence in the manner of Craig Ellwood’s Hunt House. The house arranges its principal living spaces and master bedroom suite on a single level around an interior court, opening to the south west lake view this outdoor space enhances the adjoining spaces.

Guest bedrooms and the owner’s study are slid below the living volume, accessed by a central open stair on the view. The materials palette is limited and restrained; local stone, timber and zinc; expanding on detailing solutions developed previously at Bendemeer and Amisfield Winery within the region.

The house is designed to take advantage of the northerly views to Lake Wakatipu and sun, but also to make a fluid connection between internal and external spaces. An outdoor room in the centre of the plan mediates between public and private / served and servant spaces, and unlocks the solution for single level living on a steep site constrained by a rolling height restriction.

The brief for the Grand Café was for an elegant, theatrical, welcoming, fresh, flexible and functional restaurant. The third stage of a five stage refurbishment, the Grand Café is a key element in positioning Christchurch Casino as an entertainment destination.

Guests are welcomed to The Grand Café by a warm glowing timber panelled wall and long marble counter that handles day to day transactions, and transforms into a pre-dinner champagne bar for large events. High level white lacquer and bevelled mirror panels visually connect The Grand Café to the Main Gaming Hall while refracting natural light from the existing double height windows. Timber veneer panels at low level creates a more human scale in the double height space delivering an ambience suitable for both daytime use as well as evening dining and entertainment.

The bespoke carpet pattern references the playing card façade with scatters of large, abstract ‘flowers’ composed of diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades in vivid green and electric blue. Bespoke furniture finishes the space in rich dark stained solid oak and vibrant green leather.

Hovering in the double height space is a large ‘paper’ chandelier which perfectly captures the heart of the interior design - dramatic, elegant and playful.  

Warren and Mahoney teamed up with the Central South Architectural Design Institute (CSADI) in Wuhan, China to produce a joint entry for the Pingyang Government and Cultural Centre design competition. The 136,000m² project, spread over a 650,000m² site in the city of Pingyang, Wenzhou Province, included a government administration building flanked by several cultural buildings as well as the design of an artificial mountain and rivers.

The masterplan, developed by CSADI, located the artificial mountain at the northern end of the site with an axial plaza running south directly through the site following feng shui principles.

Warren and Mahoney focused on the design of the cultural buildings and developed a museum, library, urban planning and exhibition centre, and archival repository building along with the development of the overall landscape linking the project together.

The artificial mountain informed the landscape which resulted in a facetted and folded language.  In turn, the cultural buildings followed this language and were designed to appear as if they emerged out of the landscape and were kept sculptural and facetted in form.

In response to the catastrophic effects of the 2011 earthquakes on central Christchurch, Warren and Mahoney has given thought to the future shape and character of the central business district. 

Ten Thoughts 

In March 2011, while it was too soon to propose specific solutions, we asked: “what are the key insights which might inform the reconstruction of our city?”

We initiated Ten Thoughts for Christchurch as the start of a conversation, to be undertaken with Christchurch itself, to explore common-sense points of departure and key insights for the future shape of our city.

Ten Thoughts x Ten Leaders

In order to test our thinking and to understand the views of others on the potential for a new central city we have undertaken a sequence of conversations with ten leading figures from Christchurch’s business, professional and cultural sectors. 

These dialogues occurred between May and August 2011 and are published as “10x10”.

Looking forward

We recognise and value the intellect and passion expressed by these leaders in their assessment of the challenges confronting us. The city will be stronger for their inherent optimism. 

We are also encouraged that the recently released draft City Plan has responded to each of our Ten Thoughts in its proposed framework for the city as outlined in the Volume 1 document. The points we raise have been identified as fundamental strategies in the new City Plan. 

We look forward to contributing further to the City Plan and to the commencement of the rebuild of our city during 2012.

PETER MARSHALL
MANAGING DIRECTOR
WARREN AND MAHONEY

10 x 10 - Ten Thoughts for Christchurch

(File size: 7MB)

The broad and open themes of ‘adaptation and regeneration’ defined the 2011 NZIA conference. These themes can apply equally to the evolution of a architectural practice as to the development of cities or to their reconstruction. John Coop was invited to address these themes, speaking on the afternoon of the opening day. He chose to speak to strategies currently informing the evolution of Warren and Mahoney including diversification, communications, and collaboration. As part of his response he created a series of interviews, posing the same themes for discussion to current Clients and Collaborators. Both the paper and the interviews are recorded here.