From the already wildly-popular Commercial Bay retail precinct, housing the Harbour Eats dining hall, through frosted glass sliding doors, is the new PwC Tower. A design collaboration between Woods Bagot and Warren and Mahoney, the tower comprises 39 floors and nearly 30,000m² of glass and welcomed its first tenants – including anchor client PwC along with Jarden – on 27 July 2020. 

After leaving the retail precinct, the interiors of the tower are distinct enough that you know you’ve entered a new zone. The darker, grounding tones of green, grey and brass smoothly blend into the airier sand-coloured stone that clads the walls of the tower. The design is still anchored in many of the same materials as the retail offering – the deep ash-grey flooring, dark timber accents and, of course, the extensive glazing – but, overall it feels lighter, almost floating. 

On the street level entry, the floatiness is accentuated by the fact that the facade is held in place entirely autonomously – steel supports are housed within the glass itself for a seamless look. In fact, the whole tower appears to be upheld with ease. Michael Mason, part of the project team at Warren and Mahoney explains that the new City Rail Link (CRL) tunnels running underneath the building meant that a traditional concrete core in the middle of the tower wasn’t possible. Instead, a side-core arrangement was used on the city side of the building housing the glazed lifts.

One city-side column runs between twin curved CRL tunnels below, and this became the starting point for the design. “To thread the column through the middle of the tunnels, we had to continue it as a steel blade between the tunnels where they tighten. All of the other columns, once you get to basement level, sit on concrete piles.”

This level also houses the end-of-trip amenities that are becoming standard in workplaces of the future as companies increasingly look to attract the best talent with amenity offer, but multiplied to meet the needs of a 39-floor building that is nearly 100% leased. Hundreds of bicycle parks and lockers, almost 20 showers in each changing room and seamless entry from the street or underground parking ensure that tenants have everything they need to transition from home to work. The changing rooms feel more like what you might find in a country club than an office building: featuring a monochromatic black and grey palette and strategic strip-lighting.

As you move up to the “Sky Lobby”, extensive glazing continues, offering views out to an adjacent, 1400m² rooftop terrace. A full service restaurant and bar, along with a separate coffee offering fills the space as well as soft seating options for casual catch-ups. The same sand-coloured stone walls are accented with mustard and camel hues, giving the area a relaxed atmosphere. You feel that you could stop here and rest for a while, which was, no doubt, the intended response. 

“The other thing that the CRL tunnels directed us towards was having the lobby at this level,” Mason says. “We couldn’t land the lifts on the ground level because of the presence of the tunnels.

“It was a bit of a jigsaw to put together.” But, he asserts, this move along with creating a side-core configuration due to the CRL restrictions were “key moves that have been really beneficial to the way the building is set up”.

For a building that seemingly floats, the 37th floor feels remarkably sturdy, and the views are quite literally unparalleled – excepting perhaps by the Pacifica, which is climbing up in the periphery. When we visited, this particular floor was empty, and it was here that the openness of the floorplate demonstrated how flexible fitout designs could be for tenants.

Warren and Mahoney also report that Commercial Bay is “New Zealand’s most sustainable high-rise office building,” achieving a 5-Star Greenstar design rating. “The high-performance glazing was specified to include a ceramic frit below the low-E coating – a sophisticated process only available from two glass manufacturers globally at the time,” says Warren and Mahoney principal Blair Johnston.

“For me,” Johnston says,”this project will always speak about partnership. What a range of parties were able to achieve collectively far exceeded what any one party could have achieved in isolation. It’s a great example of a private entity – in this case Precinct Properties working collaboratively with council organisations – Auckland Council, Panuku, Auckland Transport and CRL, [along with] Mana Whenua partners to achieve an outcome that moves the experience of the city forward. I hope this the start of a new model for integrated CBD development – with design outcomes, identity and sustainability as core principles.”