nzdan

Recently Bates Smart was announced winner of the Dulux Colour Awards – Commercial Exterior for a project by our Sydney office “Grand Plimmer”, Wellington NZ. It is quite ironic for me that my new firm in Australia wins an award for a project in my home town, congratulations to everyone involved.

Project Description: Grand Plimmer, Wellington NZ

Wellington is built on a narrow plateau of land, much of it landfill, between the mountains and the bay. The Grand Plimmer sits on the edge of an historic walkway, The Plimmer Steps, which negotiates the escarpment between the harbour and the hills. The Grand Plim­mer consists of an office tower and a hotel tower over a retail and car parking podium. The two towers align with the separate geometries of the lower (harbour) lands and the upper (mountain) land. The buildings have a structural ‘Exoskeleton’ for earthquake resistance and an inner non-structural frame.

Bates Smart have used colour to reveal both the structural logic and contextual location of the towers within Wellington. Warm Black has been used on the structural frame while the inner frame consists of a pixilation of colours derived from native New Zealand flora and fauna. A fish was selected to represent the bay and butterfly’s and flowers to represent the mountains. These were abstracted and pixelated to create a colour palette; which has been applied to the inner skin of the façade in a random pixelated pattern.

The colour palette, as well as the quantity and intensity of colour varies depending on the angle the buildings are viewed, as well as the time of day and the available sunlight creating a constantly shifting perception of the building throughout the day and around the city.