City Design - RTA
City Design
Leaving Booth Sweetman and Wolf I went to City Design Architects. This was the former Architecture and Engineering Department of the Auckland City Council now made into a stand alone business unit.
South Piha beach pavilion
The first was the South Piha beach pavilion. I did developed design, documentation and supervision. The outline of a sketch design had been done before I arrived at the practice. I made decisions about materiality and detail that were important in the overall presentation of the project. This was a successful project that led on to number of commissions for similar buildings,and established a "woody" architectural language that was adopted by other architects doing work out west.
Novaloo
The next project is the one that is the most significant of all in the work presented here. This was in response to an initial commission for a small public convenience in Beresford Square. Because I had been interested in prefabricated architecture at Auckland University I suggested that we have the WC made in a factory and lift it as a complete building onto the site. The first four were made in a boatshed in Okahu Bay, which was modified to get them out.
187 of these were eventually made, and located around the Auckland area and beyond it. These little buildings were initially designed to reference the tramways period architecture that was around Beresford Square and with a nod to the pissoirs of Paris. A leaf shape was introduced when Waitakere City became a client and other variations exist. The sketch was done early in the design development process and that became part of the marketing literature for the company that made them. The use of stainless steel was a suggestion of the maker Wayne Milne. This was probably the most crucial aspect which led to the success of these.Infrastructure
Here is another waste related public works project. This infrastructure item was designed to prevent the flow of rubbish into Auckland Harbour through use of seives. From memory it was located near Custom Street.
Misc City Design
I worked as part of larger teams on a number of other interesting projects such as Matiatia Wharf, the Stardome, the Town Hall upgrade and the Civic Theatre upgrade.
All good things come to an end. City Design was eventually sold to GHD. Many of us left at this point.RTA studio
Then I had a stint at RTA studio at the time when Richard Naish was establishing himself. This project is the old Yates seed warehouse in Fort St which was refurbished and adaptively reused for Daniel Friedlander of Samson Corporation.