We have the seri­ous hots for some of the archi­tects archi­tec­ture around town. Build­ings that not only func­tion as they were intend­ed but also make the streets a more excit­ing and pleas­ant place to be make us hap­py peo­ple.

Put on the Bar­ry White because if this build­ing was a per­son, I would be mak­ing sweet sweet luu­urve to it right now:

After the jump, we present the build­ings…

A. New Meridian head office (Kumutoto)

Yeah, it’s been giv­en the col­lec­tive group hump by all media out­lets late­ly due to its ‘green­ness’, but the fact that the Merid­i­an build­ing prac­tices what they preach (being the only elec­tric­i­ty sup­pli­er who only uses renew­able resources), that it max­imis­es its gor­geous water­front loca­tion AND adds to the over­all aes­thet­ic of the water­front makes us hap­py to join in that hump. Not only that, but the hun­gry and thirsty among us are look­ing for­ward to some extra spe­cial sur­pris­es on the ground floor.

B. The Department of Conservation Building on Manners St


It’s anoth­er green build­ing, of course, but what makes this extra green is that it recy­cles an old build­ing. Not only that, it man­aged to turn an embar­rass­ing reminder of the archi­tec­tur­al excess­es of the ’80s into some­thing cool and ele­gant. To appre­ci­ate it, you real­ly have to wan­der inside and expe­ri­ence the light flow­ing through the atri­um and the spec­tac­u­lar stair­case. Add in a roof gar­den café and it’s hard not to envy those work­ing here.

C. Te Puni Kōkiri House


Who could resist the rip­p­li­cious 1930s-style flanks topped out with flat plates wrench­ing the eye to a halt among light spaces and green glass? We can’t. And Hotere’s bril­liant and sub­ver­sive sculp­ture out front, a bro­ken col­umn seem­ing to por­tend the fail­ure of tem­po­ral (and Pāke­hā?) pow­er, is the icing on the cake.

WINNER!!!
D. Wellington Central Library

We love this as much for what it con­tains as for its admit­ted­ly beau­ti­ful struc­ture. Ian Ath­field­’s design is still refus­ing to date after over a decade, and it’s quite a shock to be remind­ed that post­mod­ernism was sup­posed to be about lan­guage, his­to­ry and humour rather than slap­ping cheap arch­es and columns on things.

E. “Boathouse” apartments and atrium at Chaffers Dock

If only all new apart­ment build­ings could be this light, crisp and live­ly. Sub­tle zig-zags and folds ani­mate the north­ern ele­va­tion, step­ping in and out just enough to stop it being an extrud­ed lump, with­out going over­board and wacky. The atri­um is also an essay in light and angles, with slash­es of sun­shine stream­ing from the roof and slen­der lean­ing columns bring­ing dynamism to the space. Now, if only some of the ground-floor ten­ants had lived up to the design chal­lenge…

For a handy map of where to see all these build­ings, use the “best­build­ing” tag on ZoomIn. Go and feast your eyes before vot­ing opens on Novem­ber 19.