Principal in charge, Severin Soder, says the process started with a master plan for Kiwi Property’s future development concept of all the Sylvia Park site and then focussed on the position and design of this first new building – a commercial office building.
“We looked at several options for where to place the building, and decided that it should be at the epicentre of the shopping centre,” says Soder.
At this point, the existing dining lane had ended in a landscaped plaza and small carpark.
“We extended the dining lane with three new food and beverage outlets on the ground floor, and developed the office building above those.”
This north side of the site now forms The Grove dining precinct, including grassed and landscaped areas for public use, and a quirky sound shell by Wraight & Associates that opens to provide a stage for entertainers, and provides a wind break function.
Soder says No.1 Sylvia Park needed to be designed as a landmark building rather than the typical office park building.
“It’s in a retail environment – with a lot of fashion retail. When you buy something like perfume, it comes in a beautiful bottle and is wrapped with beautiful packaging.
“The building itself is cuboid, and we looked at the envelope and how we could wrap and package it.”
The result is a building with four distinct facades. But these are not just decorative, surface treatments – instead they are integral to the design and functioning of the building.
To gain as much space as possible for the new dining precinct, the building was pushed as close as possible to the south of the site, adjacent to the motorway overpass running in an east-west direction.
“So we placed the core on the south side, and this facade is quite solid with few openings. But it has strong black and white projections forming bay windows looking east and west to pick up on the directional movement of the traffic.”
The east and west facades are more transparent, having more windows. The striated effect continues here through the addition of vertical sunshades to counter the effect of low sun.
“The north facade transitions again to become even more transparent. Behind this facade’s horizontal black and white sunshades is a fully glazed curtain wall, giving outlooks to Mt Wellington.”
The result is a building with abstract qualities, and a different appearance as you travel round it.
There’s as much thought gone into the interior planning as the exterior activation of the building.
The large open floor plates are organised to create vertical villages, with three atria stacked on top of each other pushing light into the floors.
Inter-tenancy stairs suspended in each of the atria create a strong sculptural focus and provide an attractive alternative to using a lift linking multi-level tenants.
Greg Tolley says Kiwi Property’s drive to mixed use is fuelled by the symbiotic relationship between the building’s tenants and centre’s retailers.
And No.1 Sylvia Park is just the first building in the wider plan for future development of the site.
“We’re investigating a hotel in the mid term and residential living options beyond that. Further, our proposed 25-year masterplan includes additional future commercial buildings and retail facilities.”
Credit list
Project
No.1 Sylvia Park, Auckland
Construction
Dominion Constructors
Structural Engineer
Holmes Consulting Group
Quantity surveyor
Rider Levett Bucknall
North facade – Thermosash Curtain Wall Glazing & Sunshades; east and west facades – Thermosash windows, Concretec precast concrete; Insol – aluminium fins, panels and louvres
Florim Magnum Porcelain from European Ceramics; Oak Tora from VidaSpace
Paints
Resene paints and plasters; Dulux powdercoats
Developer/owner
Kiwi Property Group
Project management
Pragmatix Limited
Civil engineer
Aecom Consulting
Mechanical and electrical
Norman Disney & Young
Rooflogic Ultratherm MSR and Extreme, by SWP Commercial
European Ceramics Atlanic Stone, installed by European Stone Masons
Lobby ceiling
Armstong Metalworks; Insol custom ceiling
Story by:
Paul Taylor
Photography by:
Jamie Cobel
03 Jun, 2019