ANZ Raranga at Sylvia Park
By Architectus
New Zealand’s favourite shopping centre, with its wide selection of retailers complemented by entertainment and dining options, has already become a destination in itself. The addition of the first office building on site supports Sylvia Park’s ambitions to transform into a metropolitan town centre.
A master planning exercise determined the site for the first of several planned office buildings. The building is located close to the mall’s heart, ‘The Cone’, and extends the existing restaurant precinct westward.
Food and beverage operators on ground floor face north and overlook ‘The Grove’, a new landscaped square which forms the entrance to the dining lane. The lobby for the offices has its address on the mall’s ring road.
A side core on the building’s southern facade provides access to large, efficient and flexible floor-plates (on average 1250m²) with only four internal columns. Level one can be directly accessed from the lobby via a spiral stair. On this level, juliet balconies with sliding doors visually connect the workplace to the activity on the square below. A floor to floor height of five metres enables the future expansion of the adjacent retail space.
Levels two to nine are arranged in three vertical villages around north facing atria with inter-floor connections. Optional awning windows allow for naturally ventilated porches.
The building’s envelope transitions from a solid south facade with projecting bay-windows via east/west façades with punched windows and vertical sunshades to a fully glazed north facade with horizontal sunshades – opening up the view to Mount Wellington, the area’s impressive volcanic cone.
Location:
Auckland
Completion:
2017
Products used in
ANZ Raranga at Sylvia Park
Professionals used in
ANZ Raranga at Sylvia Park
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About the
Professional
Architectus is an architecture and urbanism practice designing places and spaces tuned to their communities, context and culture. Advocates for integrated design, we apply a rigorous and tailored approach to create environments that are inspiring and enduring.
For over 30 years, we have been realising innovative and bespoke projects around Aotearoa New Zealand, shaping precincts and campuses with people and sustainability at their heart. Through a collaborative and integrated approach, we have had many successful joint ventures with local and international partners, and we enjoy a strong relationship with our associated studios in Australia.
Our Purpose
We believe architecture begins with a social agenda. It must nurture and grow communities and individuals, and enhance its neighbourhood and city. Appropriate, efficient and elegant architecture for today becomes the urban fabric of the future – we design for this longevity, to create places that will serve generations to come.
Design Philosophy
While a good project must firstly solve practical needs and be viable, a truly great project must embody a community’s broader cultural context: its urban and architectural setting, its local geography and ecology, and the stories of its people. The more meaningful a place becomes through a true sense of belonging, the greater the value and longevity it has for its community.
We believe placemaking in Aotearoa is grounded in a bicultural creative process. We partner with mana whenua to embed their aspirations and cultural narratives across functional, ceremonial, spatial and artistic dimensions.
Underpinning these human stories is our responsibility to be judicious with natural resources. Environmentally sensitive architecture requires us to be energy-efficient and space-efficient, and to use low-carbon materials and ethically sourced products.
This is a holistic approach that embeds our practice in a continuum of artistic and technical progress, so the architecture we are responsible for will be relevant for decades to come.