Picton Waterfront

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.