Table of contents for INTERIOR_19_201603 in Interior

What defines a pop-up? There are three types we deal with. Mobile pop-up covers our tuk-tuks and food trucks but also extends to events. The likes of Taste Auckland is almost a pop-up but on a festival scale. Then there are temporary ones, like the containers you see in the Re:Start mall in Christchurch. Then, the more commonly known pop-up, the short-term retail. Is there a time limit? If a shop is going to parade as a pop-up, it shouldn’t stick around for more than a year. People get impatient. Six months is good. Why would a property owner take on a short-term lease? If you’re buying a retail space, you tend to want to be a part of the community, but some people aren’t bothered. What it can do…

The latest iteration of the Creative Learning Centre in Auckland Art Gallery represents a new version of an old process. This is a collaboration with a twist, as Community Learning Coordinator Meg Nicoll explains: “Every year, we’ve worked with a different artist to create an interactive space for children to explore art and artistic practice. This year we decided to do something completely different with the Creative Learning Centre. We wanted to get the end-users – the children – involved in the creative process right from the start.” The process began through a series of three in-classroom workshops. In the first two, the students met Darragh, learned about her and her art, and then made their own artworks. “The great thing is that [the children] make stuff without overloading it,…

PROJECT NAME Christchurch Integrated Government Accommodation Project DESIGN Pelorus Architecture LOCATION Christchurch CLIENT Statistics New Zealand PROJECT TYPE Workplace FLOOR AREA 6,000m2 THEY SAY that necessity is the mother of invention, and the first part (stage one of the BNZ Centre) of the Christchurch Integrated Government Accommodation (CIGA) project illustrates this proverb twofold. Statistics New Zealand is the lead agency of the first fit-out, home to the New Zealand Transport Agency, Internal Affairs, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, the Human Rights Commission, Creative New Zealand, the Health Promotion Agency and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. The four large buildings that constitute CIGA – which will house around 1,700 government workers – need to be understood in the context of the post-quake planning decisions. In 2012 the…

BUENOS AIRES is a cosmopolitan haven in South America. Open-door immigration policies and an outwardlooking middle and upper class have meant a significant, two-way flow of ideas and information from countries as diverse as Italy and China. Although the city’s architecture reflects this eclecticism there is an undeniable slant toward the European. Brutalism and beaux arts buildings rub cornices with the neo-gothic and the art deco. Italianate and neoclassics are everywhere. Casa Cavia, in a leafy, central neighbourhood in the Argentine capital, is not just an example of the city’s fascination with Europe’s old constructions but also a success story of what can be done to modernise their interiors via clever design and edgy retail/hospitality match-ups. The 1923 house was commissioned from Norwegian/Argentine architect Alejandro Christophersen and remained in the…

PROJECT NAME Museum of Waitangi – Te Kōngahu DESIGN Harris Butt Architecture (base build) Workshop E (exhibition/interior) LOCATION Waitangi, Northland CLIENT Waitangi National Trust PROJECT TYPE Civic – Exhibition FLOOR AREA 1,160m2 THE MUSEUM of Waitangi – Te Kongahu takes an undeniably complex subject – the signing of the Treaty – and distils it into an eloquent architectural and spatial dialogue. To begin with, there is a fascinating conversation between the concrete and glass structure (by project lead Grant Harris from Harris Butt Architects) and the Māori symbolism injected into it (by artist Carin Wilson). The exhibition within this building is an impressive feat orchestrated by Workshop e and further explores this conversation between the histories of two peoples. Interior attended the – very rainy – opening day and the…

PROJECT NAME Lonely Lingerie Wellington DESIGN Rufus Knight LOCATION Wellington CLIENT Lonely Label PROJECT TYPE Retail FLOOR AREA 100m2 MORE THAN half of the adult population wears a bra but buying one can be an exercise in frustration. Having to squeeze oneself into a harshly-lit dressing room with badly-fitting curtains, poor ambience and even poorer service is a guaranteed way to sap both confidence and enjoyment. Kiwi fashion label Lonely is turning that on its head with its eponymous Ponsonby flagship store, where pared-back elegance and the carefully curated use of natural materials such as stone and salvaged timber have redefined the lingerie-buying experience. So much so, a second store, in Wellington’s Victoria Street, opened in late 2015. It’s a return to form for the Lonely brand, which started in…

CHILDREN ARE INEFFICIENT LISTENERS WHO require optimal acoustic conditions in order to hear and understand. They are neurologically undeveloped and lack experience to predict from context – especially younger students who are only starting to grasp the basics of comprehension. Children who miss key words, phrases and concepts because of poor listening conditions may perform poorly academically and suffer from behavioural problems. Recently, new classrooms are being designed as open-plan environments in which several class-bases share the same space. This results in a greater number of children in one larger area. These Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) have emerged to better facilitate working in groups and to benefit the children’s social development by promoting the sharing of skills, ideas and experiences. However, many acoustic issues arise with ILE, such as high…

INNOVATION is a difficult thing to plan for in some ways, especially in the New Zealand cultural context, where building the unbelievable in the back shed has given us some of our great heroes. Today, we associate innovation not necessarily with building ever-faster machines (think Bill Hamilton’s jetboat and John Britten’s motorcycle) but, instead, with the creation of more ephemeral constructs like software, programs for social justice and, of course business. The mantra of innovation, since the publication of Clayton M Christiansen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997, has become a central tenet of business culture. In this context ‘innovation’ has supplanted the term ‘new’ – not necessarily ‘novel’, but ‘new’. Seemingly every start-up company is an innovator, a highly disruptive force within the marketplace, and, as is often the…

PROJECT NAME Heartland Bank DESIGN Warren and Mahoney LOCATION Auckland CLIENT Heartland Bank PROJECT TYPE Workplace FLOOR AREA 1,370m2 TAKE THE lift one floor up from the bustle of Westfield Newmarket and you arrive here, at the new corporate offices of Heartland Bank. There is concurrently a feeling of calm and a sense of buzzing activity in these offices, which can be attributed to the semi-industrial design style and also the open-plan, inward-facing layout of the space. Warren and Mahoney designed the new offices to a brief from Heartland that focused on creating a practical, comfortable working environment, with opportunities to collaborate and meet informally throughout, and a layout that encouraged interaction between teams and team members. Heartland wanted to express its position as an alternative bank, different from the…

PROJECT NAME Newshub DESIGN Stack Interiors LOCATION Auckland CLIENT MediaWorks PROJECT TYPE Workspace FLOOR AREA 1,600m2 MUCH HAS been made of disruptive changes to traditional media over the past five years. The way news is delivered has undoubtedly transformed with the rapid and pervasive uptake of social media, smartphone technology and faster mobile networks. This transformation has resulted in serious pressure on traditional news-media outlets. In order to stay relevant in an industry underscored by the desire to be first, news-media corporations have had to adapt to the changing appetite of consumers. This commercial adaptation has parallels with an evolutionary notion of adaptation. Those species who are adept at change survive, while those that don’t, become confined to the fossil record. In the local market this evolution has been most…

“IT WAS A LITTLE BIT DAUNTING, BUT INCREDIBLY exciting at the same time. This was the opportunity to use ourselves as a case study; so we were very focused on not just creating a great workspace but also on getting a comprehensive understanding of the entire process first-hand, and from the client’s point of view.” Langford says the concept design began in November 2014. “I began the process with a workshop for our executive team. What did they want to achieve, in terms of the business and the brand? And that’s how the idea of ‘agility’ came about – we wanted Unispace to genuinely be a leader. I’m not sure any other design firm has been brave enough to do to themselves what they’ve done to other people, and actually…

AFTER MANY YEARS OF HYPE, VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) is on all the ‘top-trends’ lists for 2016. So, where are we in terms of realising its capabilities and how might this affect the design industry and, more specifically, interior design? VR is most popular within the gaming and entertainment industry. Forthcoming games like EVE: Valkyrie have been designed for use with VR headset technology such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Sony’s PlayStation VR. The reviewers struggle to describe the experience adequately, but many found it “breathtaking”. What may, or may not, become so popular is the furniture designed to enhance the VR gaming experience. Roto, for example, is a rotating chair that will spin with the action yet doesn’t tangle you in wires or require you to rotate the simulation. But…