2020 in Review: Top 5 commercial projects
See our most-viewed commercial projects of the year. What’s trending: heritage refurbs, medium-density housing, activated public spaces and more.
1. First look: Commercial Bay
No surprises here: We were all excited to see how this project that was nearly a decade in the making would turn out. Judges at the 2020 Interior Awards liked it enough to honour it with the Supreme Award and Architecture NZ editor Chris Barton took a deep dive into the architecture of this new Auckland landmark. But, here, take a look back at what our first impressions of the space were.
2. Butterfly effect: Antipodes HQ
Also a finalist in the Interior Awards this year and a winner in the Commercial Architecture and Heritage categories in the 2020 Wellington Architecture Awards, this refurb of an art deco building in Wellington by Architecture Workshop deserves the hype. We take a closer look at the interiors for the new Antipodes Skincare headquarters, full of retro details, brass accents and natural light.
3. Happy Days domain
This feature’s appearance in 2020’s top articles is a nod to the growing importance of well-designed medium-density housing. Here, Chris Barton visits DKO Architecture’s mix of terraced and apartment living, and its attendant cars, at Richmond, a former quarry site in Auckland’s Mount Wellington.
4. Fit for pawns and queens: Latimer Terraces
Another delve into a new medium-density residential development is this look at Christchurch’s One Central. Abigail Hurst explores Warren and Mahoney’s Latimer Terraces, the first of many chessboard moves to establish diverse central-city living in Christchurch’s East Frame.
5. 30 years on: Wellington Central Library
This Ian Athfield-designed capitol city icon was a topic of much discussion this year. City residents weighed in on whether to keep the original building and pay for the upgrades it would need to make it safe or demolish the whole thing and start again. The Council eventually decided on the former. We pulled the original review of the space from the March/April 1992 issue of Architecture NZ out of the archives to hear some of Ath’s own thoughts on the building.
See more from 2020 in Review here.
