Site 9 nears completion | Architecture Now

In 1997, architect Ian Athfield, together with Megan Wraight, Penny Allen, Chris McDonald, Graeme McIndoe and Stuart Niven, put ahead a variety of ideas for what was then a fenced-off, windswept working port and automotive park on Wellington’s waterfront. The proposed areas have been designed to interact with the water’s edge, present vistas out to the harbour and set up laneways and sheltered public areas. Twenty-five years later, the town continues to grasp the outcomes of this earlier work.

Set to be accomplished in August, the Athfield Architects-designed Web site 9 buildings and public house growth will present the lacking hyperlink, by way of shelter, exercise and amenity, between the North Kumutoto and Whitmore Plaza areas, complementing and linking between present and soon-to-be full buildings and panorama.

Web site 9 is made up of diagonally offset interlocking parts, elevated on piers. The decrease, south-eastern ‘container stack’ (floor plus three ranges) extends alongside the japanese, waterfront aspect of the constructing after which wraps across the southern finish. The taller, north-western ‘elevated body’ part (floor plus 4 ranges) folds alongside its western edge, in response to the historic alignment shift of the Quays.

“The container stack has a façade comprising porcelain panels and louvres, offset with glazed panels,” explains architect Andre Bishop. “It references the patterns of stagger bond, stacked transport containers and, at a micro scale, the historic brick façades of the sheds and the timber parts of the Meridian Constructing and Web site 8 panorama.”

The elevated body has predominantly unitised, glazed (frosted and clear) and aluminium panel façade. “This larger-format, extra clear façade references the town buildings to its west and the gantry construction of the PwC Centre (Web site 10), in addition to different maritime industrial constructions to the north,” says Bishop.