Long before the Sky Tower rose into view, Auckland’s skyline was shaped by a quieter set of icons that marked the ambitions of a growing and diversifying city.

At the corner of Wellesley Street and Lorne Street stands Tāmaki Makaurau’s most unique postmodern tower. With its tiered roofline, deep-red aluminium skin and unmistakable silhouette, the building, formerly known as Orient Towers, now Choice Plaza, has long drawn both admiration and debate. Designed by the late Ron Sang in 1986 and completed in 1989, it remains a rare example of a large-scale, high-rise commercial building led by a Chinese-Kiwi architect. Much of the original documentation remains in the owner’s possession, and scattered fragments survive in private and public archives.

The design itself sparked mixed opinions. While some described it as “pagoda-style” and a “touch of China”, others within the community viewed it as excessive or even pastiche. Its unapologetically striking form embodied the spirit of postmodernism. It now stands as a testament to that sentiment, where cultural visibility in the built environment was still emerging, and not without resistance.

Pagodas, traditionally, are spiritual structures functioning as temples or shrines, often layered and towering, meant to house sacred relics or invite reflection. In the West, however, the pagoda form has historically been abstracted into commercial or decorative motifs, especially in spaces marked as ‘Chinatowns’. In many global cities, these motifs emerged as a paradoxical response to racial exclusion — simultaneously a means to contain difference and a visual cue for tourism. The result is that ‘Chinatowns’ often carry both the history of alienation and the allure of aesthetic otherness. While Ron Sang had noted that Lorne Street was not considered a ‘Chinatown’, today, the area is almost entirely populated by Asian-run vendors. In retrospect, the pagoda-like silhouette of Choice Plaza feels both out of place and strangely prophetic: like an early marker of a transformation that hadn’t yet arrived. It was a bold expression of diasporic ambition: a declaration of presence in a city that had, until then, made little space for Asian authorship in its urban landscape.

Originally intended as an office and hospitality complex, the building struggled to attract tenants. Interpersonal conflicts reportedly prevented the Chinese restaurant from operating fully and, within two years of completion, the development was placed in receivership. The building sat largely unoccupied for years. It wasn’t until 2007 that a Korean restaurant opened on the first floor and, by 2008, the upper levels were retrofitted into a backpackers’ hostel.

A recent visit revealed just how much of Choice Plaza has gone undocumented. Eric, who operates the backpackers, led us on a full tour, from the basement-turned-reception to the ladder climb up to the rooftop. Along the way, he mentioned quirks, like a tangle of obsolete telephone wiring and other untouched relics of past uses, whose stories are now hard to trace. For architect Darryl Sang, it was the first time stepping inside one of his father’s most ambitious works and a reminder that Ron Sang’s architecture is an integral part of the city’s urban morphology and also something still to be rediscovered.

The basement, once a drive-in car park, has been converted into a reception and lobby. The street level has cycled through several lives: a sushi shop, a barber shop and, for a long time, a pancake stall that operated from a wooden roll-out shutter. At time of writing, the Korean restaurant has moved down to the street level, sharing the space with a hair salon and a takeaway restaurant.

Despite the decades of wear and tear, the building still carries traces of its original finishes. The first and second floors sit vacant and retain their grand spiral staircase and tinted mirrored ceilings, and an intricate brass chandelier. The second level, filled with natural light, opens to a balcony with old potted plants. From here, we see the blood-red-aluminium tiered cladding, which curves gently, referencing the traditional flying cornices.

Floors three to 10 have been subdivided and retrofitted with GIB walls, with each room hand-painted with murals spanning international references from Kiwiana to Egypt, creating a strange and eclectic series of environments that mirror the building’s own complex history of fleeting occupants.

Reaching the top floor, we entered the attic through a small spiral staircase, lined with a curved glass-brick wall and a brass handrailing, which led us into the dim, airless storage space lit only by two cloudy skylights.

From there, we reached the rooftop by taking the lift to its highest point, then threading our way up a narrow stair through to the service shaft, before ascending a ladder. As we stepped out at the top, the roof opened to a full view over the junction of Wellesley and Queen Streets. We could touch the green ceramic tiles, which were imported from China and meticulously hand-selected by Sang himself.

The building predates many of the landmarks we now associate with Tāmaki Makaurau’s skyline and remains an under-celebrated icon. It still stands expressively, reinhabited in unexpected ways, and is a signal that the city’s architectural history is broader and more diverse than is often recognised. In its later life, Choice Plaza became a kind of informal archive of pan-Asian urbanism and the first of its type in Aotearoa. It wasn’t designed as such but, over time, it was shaped and occupied by international communities, artists and business owners who made it their own. In this sense, it continues to do what it did from the beginning: make Asian presence visible in a literal and material way. Choice Plaza reminds us that legacy isn’t always found in awards or acclaim. Sometimes, it’s found in buildings that persist through contradiction, adaptation and quiet acts of occupation.