FROM THE ARCHITECTS DRAWING
Wellington City Mission has been helping those in need for 120 years. To make sure they could continue caring for and supporting the local community, they found themselves in need of a little help themselves, and thanks to fundraising and support from the Government they were able to complete the construction of a new $49.5 million transformational community facility.
The building at Oxford Terrace took 6 years to come to fruition and was opened in November 2024, offering transitional housing apartments, a social supermarket, cafe, showers, laundry, and a medical centre, along with various rooms for counsellors and addiction support staff to help those in need.
The design for ‘Whakamaru’ included a series of sliding perforated aluminium panels which could be manually manipulated by occupants to provide the required levels of visual privacy, or to shade the interior. The screen directly above the main entrance would feature an extension of the main design on the ‘pic perf’ feature screen covering the main glazed area of the street frontage.
To the right hand side of the entrance, darker coloured perforated screens serve much the same purpose. The difference is these are virtually continuous and are designed to blend in completely with the building front.
TO DESIGN REALITY
Those darker coloured screens feature a dapple ‘light wash’ pattern, which has an open area of 53.66 and has been wind tested and known to have a very low risk of generating noise, making it suitable for use over 10m high and around building edges. Even with gusts up to 108 Km/h, which are rare even in Wellington, there is little chance of this dapple pattern making any sound.
The white powder coated perforated screens above the main entranceway feature a custom perforation pattern that compliments the main pic perf screen below them. Each screen is manually operable via a shutter bolt and is fixed at the head and sill to a continuous 300x50 aluminium RHS support. Like the darker perforated screens, they can be easily manipulated by window cleaners for access to the glazing.
At street level, the most impactful perforated panel is undoubtedly the large ‘pic perf’ screen that sits out in front of the main glazed area facing the street. Consisting of multiple panels with differing widths, the perforations are arranged to show three levels of transparency, creating both a picture and lettering above. Those letters spell ‘Whakamaru’, the shortened version of the Maori name gifted by Te Āti Awa, which translates as “the shelter of the cloak of protection of the wider Wellington region”.
Now open, Whakameru never closes. It’s operational day and night, providing a vibrant community hub where there is no ‘us and them’. The perforated screens both attract attention and blend in, helping establish a new landmark, where those who need help can find it, and where they can work through life’s challenges in considered privacy.
