Vodafone Office, Auckland

Vodafone New Zealand's main office in Auckland, is a refurbished high-tech building housing over 1800 staff in comfort and style.

Client: Smales Farm

Architect: Warren & Mahoney

Contractor: NZ Strong Construction

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The Brief

The building was twenty years old and undergoing an extensive refurbishment. We were invited to put forward suggestions for a metal shading screen for a large curved glass façade.

The requirements were:

• to modernise the appearance of the building
• to reduce demand on mechanical cooling
• to improve the tenants' working environment by minimising glare from early morning sun.

Key Challenges

• To engineer a minimalistic and aesthetically unobtrusive support structure capable of clear-spanning a large existing curtain wall, without penetrating the glazing.
• To install and deliver large volumes of products and materials at a site located right beside a busy main intersection.

Our Approach

We presented several options that complied with the brief, while requiring no fixing through the existing 20-year-old glazed curtainwall. Working alongside the architects, we arrived at final design of a 5-storey high, 21m-wide aluminium structure with vertical 450mm fins.

Result

The vertical fins provide protection from early morning glare, while the horizontal perforated walkways offer shade from the later morning sun.