Site 9 nears completion
A 1997 Lambton Harbour public space concept sketch.
A 1997 Lambton Harbour public space concept sketch.
A 1997 Lambton Harbour public space concept sketch.
A 1997 Lambton Harbour public space concept sketch.
The 2007 competition scheme for the design of Site 9.
A 2016 concept sketch.
A 2016 context diagram of Site 9.
A 2016 concept rendering.
Artist’s impression of the west façade of Site 9, Lambton Harbour.
Artist’s impression of an interior office space in Site 9.
Construction progress made in 2022.
In 1997, architect Ian Athfield, along with Megan Wraight, Penny Allen, Chris McDonald, Graeme McIndoe and Stuart Niven, put forward a number of concepts for what was then a fenced-off, windswept working port and car park on Wellington's waterfront. The proposed spaces were designed to engage with the water's edge, provide vistas out to the harbour and establish laneways and sheltered public spaces. Twenty-five years later, the city continues to realise the results of this earlier work.
Set to be completed in August, the Athfield Architects-designed Site 9 buildings and public space development will provide the missing link, in terms of shelter, activity and amenity, between the North Kumutoto and Whitmore Plaza areas, complementing and linking between existing and soon-to-be complete buildings and landscape.
Site 9 is made up of diagonally offset interlocking components, elevated on piers. The lower, south-eastern ‘container stack’ (ground plus three levels) extends along the eastern, waterfront side of the building and then wraps around the southern end. The taller, north-western ‘elevated frame’ component (ground plus four levels) folds along its western edge, in response to the historical alignment shift of the Quays.
“The container stack has a façade comprising porcelain panels and louvres, offset with glazed panels,” explains architect Andre Bishop. “It references the patterns of stagger bond, stacked shipping containers and, at a micro scale, the historical brick façades of the sheds and the timber components of the Meridian Building and Site 8 landscape.”
The elevated frame has predominantly unitised, glazed (frosted and clear) and aluminium panel façade. “This larger-format, more transparent façade references the city buildings to its west and the gantry structure of the PwC Centre (Site 10), as well as other maritime industrial structures to the north,” says Bishop.
