By Tennent Brown Architects
Located at the gateway to the Lake Matheson walk, the project is a private sector café and retail facility, offering reflective views of Aoraki Mt Cook. Tennent Brown worked closely with the Department of Conservation to provide visitor interpretation. The design solution for the Café forms a long galley space with a staggered glazed wall facing the alpine view, affording internal and external spaces for tables under a lowered cloudlike ceiling element. Broad overhangs provide shelter from sun and south westland rain.
DoC also engaged Tennent Brown and Wraight & Associates to design the carparking and toileting for the 120,000 visitors per annum who walk the Lake. The carpark design utilises planted swales to purify runoff water, and integrates wastewater dripper lines into aisles of planting between parking.
Tennent Brown is concerned with people, how our buildings and environments will affect their experience. We design to uplift the quality of life, of work, play and wellbeing of those the buildings serve. Architecture is built around people, and every design is an individual's or organisation’s story: their hopes and aspirations for a building that is their own.
People entrust us with realising some expression of themselves, to translate that into built form. We take that seriously. Ours is an architecture of listening and understanding: a humanist architecture.