This 1980s three level commercial building in central Auckland, formerly a Korean travel agency, was untenanted and in dire need of a makeover. Searching for a new head office, Lindesay Construction bought the building in 2013 and resident architect William Lindesay began designing the renovation.

The project also included the upgrade of the fire and other safety systems and also further raised the earthquake rating to an excellent level. New modern kitchens and bathrooms included the introduction of showers to each floor.

The inside was stripped back to the minimal industrial bones; exposed structural soffits, raw concrete columns and polished concrete floors. The exterior, which was formerly black and maroon, was transformed to a modern and colourful matrix.

The existing building had solid cubes attached to the façade in the format of the glazing above. The cubes above the entry and on the corner of the building represented to the architect an opportunity to reflect and engage with the 80s origins of the building. A scheme was developed to retain the cubes but paint them to symbolise a Rubik’s® Cube, a popular game of the 1980s familiar to most people of that era.

The remainder of the building was painted a uniform black as a background and the local Resene ColorShop in Victoria Park assisted with matching the primary colours for the panels.

In an otherwise grey street, the new colour scheme identifies the building as an icon of the inner city street. The renovation has been a popular transformation in the street, especially as the top corner is revealed in winter behind the large plane trees of Vincent Street.

As work began, the cubes were found to be rotten and had to be rebuilt from treated H3.2 timber and fibre cement sheet. Built off site, they were then reattached to the building on new stainless steel brackets.

One of the existing panels was three cubes wide (rectangle), which was broken into three separate cubes to better reflect the new concept.

The gloss sheen level of the Resene Enamacryl helps to emphasise the colours that were matched by Resene to Bespoke red #C41E3A, Bespoke green #009E60, Bespoke blue #0051BA, Bespoke orange #FF5800 and Bespoke yellow #FFD500 complemented by Resene White.

Specifier: William Lindesay
Photographer: Hannah Sutherland
Project: Resene Total Colour Awards 2014

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