Slider Building Stanley Street

The Slider Building is located at 8-14 Stanley Street, Parnell.  It faces Parnell Rise, Carlaw Park Avenue, and Stanley Street, and it adds momentum to the existing Carlaw Park development, a group of low-rise, mixed-use units within a shared campus-style environment.

The new building presents an opportunity for the largely-concealed Carlaw Park development to make its presence felt at the public interface with Stanley Street, providing both physical connectivity and visual identity for the larger site.

Stanley Street, with its direct connection to the motorway, is dominated by vehicle traffic.  However, the predominantly glass façade of the Slider Building offers visual permeability, and enables an active edge at ground level, helping to soften the car-dominated environment. The site also offers strong pedestrian connectivity to both the Carlaw Park development and the adjacent Auckland Domain.

Designed to meet the demand for large, city-fringe space with high public visibility, the building’s floor plates are designed to maximise A-Grade tenant space.  They also provide inter-floor connectivity through a south facing atrium, a space which itself is engaged in the entrance sequence. 

The sheer glass façade is countered by deeply-modelled double-storey recesses that add considerable weight to the composition of the building. The recesses and overhangs signal points of entry to the building, and create external spaces for the enjoyment of the building’s occupants.

The choice of materials was deliberately subdued.  The main palette is limited to concrete and glass, while the interior foyer is detailed in natural timber battens and stone.  This desire for unpainted, tactile materials is consistent with our client’s requirement for substance, durability and sustainability.

The reading of the building as two equal-but-unconnected rectangular components is important, allowing the relationship between glass facades and recessed voids to be controlled in a crisp, well-defined composition.  

As well as maximising the business interface with Stanley Street, the building’s simple, highly-glazed geometry links beyond to the Auckland Central Business District and the Auckland University precinct.