A Fresh New Look

Jason Bailey. Architect SoFresh NZ required a new office facility for their produce exporting headquarters, which would accommodate a ten person staff. The original brief was to renovate the existing office premises, a very ordinary single storey brick veneer house, to a more suitably commercial environment. It quickly became apparent that this existing structure was fundamentally restricting the brief, and we obtained agreement from Sofresh NZ to explore the design of a new building.

As a consequence, the new building would need to be constructed from a tight budget.  We explored the basic requirement to design a comfortable and functional work environment, plus took the opportunity afforded by a new building to create an architectural representation for the company's image.

The flat and spacious site is located on a raised plateau with views toward the Pukekohe township. The proposed building would share the site with a large storage barn (temporarily accommodated by the Sofresh NZ team during construction), gravelled car park and outdoor barbeque and entertainment area.

The client provided us with a free reign to design according to their brief, and gave us the opportunity to follow through with all aspects of the design, extending to furniture and art selection. 
A central spine form incorporates the entry, kitchen and toilet facilities, technology hub and storage rooms for the offices. This central form is a 'thickened wall', which divides the more public open plan office, reception and waiting areas from the more private meeting room spaces and lunch and entertaining room. This spine coincides with a generous internal gutter running the length of the building, and extends to the entrance with a projected signage wall. 

This spine structure supports the tilted roof planes raking up to the east and west with expanses of glazing offering views to generous gardens.

We sought to explore the language of the rural shed, in response to the rural locality and the nature of the product. Longrun steel was an obvious cladding choice for walls and roofing, both for the vernacular association of rural structures and for the cost effectiveness of the material. We combined with rendered brick walls to provide an element of robustness and anchoring the building to the site. Meranti plywood soffits provided an element of warmth and contrast to the harder more industrial material components.

Within the building, a comfortable and contemporary office environment relates to the world of international commerce. The generous kitchen and entertaining space was positioned in response to the existing and frequently used outdoor barbeque garden area.

Thanks to the confidence and cooperation extended to us by the client, and an efficient and responsive building contractor, the outcome was achieved on budget and to programme, and provided us with one of our more interesting commercial projects.