Ironbank in Auckland business district , New Zealand

October 26, 2010 Category: Cultural, Public Buildings

Ironbank was designed by RTA Studio, that located in Auckland business district , New Zealand, The building is located in a historic area on the edge of Auckland’s CBD. The front of the site addresses the high street which is dominated by a rich mixture of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Most of these buildings have fallen into varying states of disrepair over recent decades.

The building is conceived as a manifestation of a cross-contamination of the two contrasting street conditions. The high street being concerned with notions of presentation, display, etiquette and heritage, while the service lane is concerned with servicing, delivery, disorder and utility. The building has taken the opportunity to address a transition between these two street conditions.

The building presents a glass reinforced concrete (GRC) façade as a ‘veil’ to the high street edge screening the site’s interior. This screen has been conceived as an abstraction of the historical facades adjacent.

In a gesture to the finely scaled historical neighbourhood, the architects have sought to fragment the building form to alleviate the potential mass associated with a medium sized office building. Hence, 5 towers are further fragmented vertically to articulate the composition of stacked office and retail spaces gathered into a socially sustainable working community.

Ironbank Design by RTA Studio