NorthWest Shopping Centre creates a new retail hub for West Auckland

Auckland is undergoing a major North West transformation the largest of its kind seen in New Zealand, with new homes, schools, community facilities, roads and open spaces. A shining star within the development is the new NorthWest Shopping Centre driven by owners Stride Property and designed by architects The Buchan Group.

The NorthWest Shopping Centre offers a vibrant retail destination and community hub for shoppers. Around the size of four football fields, it forms the heart of the new Westgate Town Centre. The retail complex has a Countdown supermarket, a flagship Farmers store, about 100 speciality retail stores and a food court, seating 500. The centre also boasts the largest child changing facility in the country.

As the owners, Stride Property wanted the centre's interior design to reflect a strong sense of place, says Buchan associate Charlotte Cochrane.

"The interior design concept was inspired by NorthWest's proximity to the rugged West Coast. The latter's iconic black sand beaches, surrounding vineyards and colourful fruit stalls all informed design choices and material palette selections.

"For example, tiling layouts reflect the shapes and colours of sand washed up on the wild beaches, and a timber feature ceiling mimics the light tones and repetitive nature of a wine barrel.

"Even the perforated metal screens in the food court create a dappled light effect similar to that seen under the shady pergolas of a winery."

Sustainability factors include careful placement, sizing, and orientation of windows to control solar gain including clerestory windows flooding natural light along the length of the mall LED lighting on sensors, high efficiency heat pumps and high efficiency, closed loop cooling towers.

The next-generation shopping centre benefits from up-to-the-minute communication technology,too, including New Zealand's first giant full motion digital banner. The centre also has 22 of the latest generation digital and static panels, all with interactive, phone-scannable NFC and QR codes.

Stage two of the NorthWest development will include a town square and main street retail.

Story by: Trendsideas