A Rare Beast

A ware­house and show­room that shows a light archi­tec­tural touch, with meas­ured con­trasts between solid­ity and light­ness and func­tion and fin­esse.
Words: Michael Bar­rett. Pho­tos: Simon Devitt. From ProDesign 107 with addi­tional images.

Ware­houses, as their des­ig­na­tion obvi­ously denotes, are gen­er­ally exer­cises in func­tion­al­ity, places where pur­pose wins out over pos­sib­il­ity. It has to be said, there are few ware­houses that make any mem­or­able dis­play of charm, out­ward or inward. But there’s always an excep­tion, and Wingate+Farquhar’s Canada St ware­house and show­room is it — a func­tional space lav­ished with con­sid­er­a­tion. Neatly stitched into an unex­pec­ted loc­a­tion between a ser­vice lane and a hair salon at the fringe of a fringe part of town, this building’s com­mer­cial aspect is lightened with unex­pec­ted features.

For those unfa­mil­iar with the loc­ale, Canada St is spit­ting dis­tance from Queen St and a stone’s throw from New­ton. It’s the part of the CBD dealt an unfair hand by the north­west­ern motor­way, to which it’s so very close it’s an unof­fi­cial slow lane. It’s also very close to the new cafés and stores of Cross St (and the older brothels). This is a regen­er­at­ing part of town, espe­cially since Iron­bank took up its monu­mental pos­i­tion on K’ Rd, but it’s still debat­able whether the suburb’s itin­er­ant trans­vest­ite pop­u­la­tion has fully appre­ci­ated the archi­tec­tural improve­ments to the neigh­bour­hood. But let’s move swiftly on to Wingate+Farquhar’s con­tri­bu­tion to the neigh­bour­hood, which stands on a space that was in the 50s and 60s a motor repair busi­ness. More recently it was a sil­ver­smith and trophy engrav­ing busi­ness, which lat­terly lent itself to the import­a­tion of cheap plastic trophies. The new build­ing con­sists of two volumes — the show­room, aligned with Canada St and posi­tioned on the street bound­ary for vis­ib­il­ity, and the lar­ger volume of the ware­house, which stretches back par­al­lel to the ser­vice lane.

Blair Far­quhar, dir­ector at W+F, says that most of the mater­i­als spe­cified on this pro­ject are “no dif­fer­ent to what would be used in a nor­mal ware­house — they are resi­li­ent and hard­wear­ing, pre-cast con­crete, fibre­glass clad­ding, ply­wood and steel”. The dif­fer­ence is that Far­quhar has envi­sioned the use of these mater­i­als in a dif­fer­ent way.

For instance, Farquhar’s applic­a­tion of a heav­ily tex­tured fin­ish to the precast con­crete base of the building’s exter­ior is one sub­ver­sion of the mater­ial palette. It’s a bru­tal­ist tech­nique delivered from some­where in the “deep recesses” of his memory, as he puts it. The rough, pit­ted sur­face is solidly inter­est­ing, and as Far­quhar also men­tions, it should prove a rel­at­ively unful­filling can­vas for any vis­it­ing street artists.
On the east­ern, ser­vice lane side, of the build­ing, the same pre-cast pan­els are punc­tu­ated with rect­an­gu­lar inserts of col­oured glass. Swap the yel­low glass for blue and this unex­pec­ted flour­ish could be quite De Stijl-ish, espe­cially as the fen­es­tra­tions are irreg­u­lar in size and posi­tioned non-symmetrically.

This con­crete base proves a solid con­trast to the shoji screen light­ness of the show­room, which is clad with the one mater­ial that is unusual for a pro­ject such as this. Kal­wall is an Amer­ican build­ing mater­ial that is insu­lat­ing, light dif­fus­ing and trans­lu­cent. The material’s appear­ance, with alu­minium strength­en­ing bars vis­ible through the trans­lu­cent skins, enlivens the cubic show­room day and night, and its per­form­ance is indic­at­ive of the envir­on­ment­ally con­scious design pro­cess the archi­tects put the build­ing through with the assist­ance of eCubed, the ser­vices con­sult­ant on the pro­ject
Far­quhar says that show­rooms and retail premises can be prob­lem­atic when it comes to energy effi­ciency and present­a­tion of products; due to a reflec­tion issue, double-glazing isn’t an option, and tin­ted glass can obscure products rather than enhance them. At Canada St, the Kal­wall reduces heat-loss and attracts atten­tion to the struc­ture, while the aper­ture of the glaz­ing allows pass­ersby to “eas­ily inter­pret the build­ing and its functions”.

Glaz­ing presents another effi­ciency bene­fit in the ware­house proper, with an expanse of auto­mat­ic­ally con­trolled louvred win­dows aid­ing nat­ural vent­il­a­tion. To accen­tu­ate this, Far­quhar explains that part of the roof form of the ware­house has been designed with three ‘pop-up’ extract win­dows to facil­it­ate nat­ural vent­il­a­tion. Other ESD tech­niques include the incor­por­a­tion of trans­lu­cent mater­i­als, redu­cing the need for arti­fi­cial light­ing, and min­im­isa­tion of mech­an­ical plant and equip­ment which allowed the archi­tects to achieve a clean rooftop with all the plant con­cealed. On-site rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing and solar water heat­ing are other features.

Through­out the build­ing, the mater­i­als are hard-wearing and simple. The lower areas of the ware­house volume are precast con­crete, to pro­tect the build­ing from errant fork­lift work. The upper part of the ware­house is dual-skinned polycar­bon­ate, for insu­la­tion and bet­ter stor­age con­di­tions for products. The pur­pose­fully lim­ited mater­ial palette uses ply­wood detail­ing around win­dows and in the in the upper office space and the lower kit­chen amenities.

Far­quhar says that like many com­mer­cial struc­tures the build­ing was designed to the para­met­ers of the bound­ar­ies it inhab­its, based on the levels of the build­ings that exis­ted prior to it, using mater­i­als com­mon to the typo­logy. There are many com­mer­cial build­ings that are almost cyn­ical in their expres­sion. This is clearly dif­fer­ent — a com­mer­cial struc­ture built for the long haul and, import­antly, also one that could be adap­ted for another pur­pose if con­tin­ued changes to the sur­round­ing neigh­bour­hood dictate.

Selec­ted credits:

Cli­ent Sam­son Cor­por­a­tion
Archi­tect Wingate+Farquhar
Pro­ject man­ager Styles Pro­ject Man­age­ment
Builder Macren­nie Com­mer­cial Con­struc­tion
Ser­vices con­sult­ant eCubed
Struc­tural con­sult­ant Brown & Thompson
Window/door join­ery Brad­nams
Archi­tec­tural hard­ware Wilson & Macin­doe
Paint Resene
Floor­ing Pol­ished Con­crete; Inter­face NZ car­pet
Light­ing Concept Light­ing
Precast con­crete Wilco
Clad­ding Kall­wall from Jac­ob­sens; Pro­filed fibre­glass clad­ding from Alys­nite

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