Carlaw Living

The Carlaw Living development consists of 130 high quality residential apartments arranged in 5 buildings framing a generous central courtyard. The project is located in a key city fringe location, adjacent to the Auckland Domain. 

The communal open spaces and landscaped corridors tie carefully into the character of the surrounding Domain and public reserves creating the setting of a residential village within a natural environment. The central courtyard doubles as a major metropolitan-scale common space for residents, as well as providing private garden space for podium level residents. 

Individual building entry spaces are located in highly visible locations addressing the central public open space. These locations are reinforced vertically with highly glazed circulation areas and stairwells, so that the life and activity of the building is clearly expressed. 

Apartment planning is carefully zoned to ensure service spaces are located along the length of the corridor, and living areas and bedrooms are located along the highly glazed façade with excellent access to natural light and ventilation. Apartment plans are generously sized and all have access to large external living areas – either ground floor gardens or upper level balconies. 

Balcony and vertical circulation elements have been considered as architectural elements and are composed to provide a fine and varied vertical grain to the buildings – while the internal planning of the apartment buildings is regular and efficient, the balconies are manipulated to provide variation and movement across the facades. The combination of these elements ensure that each of the buildings has a high degree of articulation, creating depth and shadow together with a clear reading of human scale and proportion. 

Selected balcony ‘frames’ are projected beyond the uniform height of the buildings to provide variation in the visible built skyline. Balustrading is carefully considered to balance the needs of outlook and privacy. 

The proposed development makes use of a restricted palette of high quality natural materials including stone, honed and off-form concrete, glass, and timber. These materials are sympathetic to the surrounding Domain context and are generally presented in their natural state. A natural weathering process is anticipated, resulting in a warm, tactile quality appropriate to a high quality residential environment.