CREATING ARCHITECTURE
I have often been asked how architects come up with our design ideas. While I would like to say they are all flashes of pure genius, to be honest, they are usually a combination of deriving inspiration from the history or immediate environment of the site and the need to solve a particular problem with the associated constraints around this.
And there are normally many constraints! Council planning requirements, NZ Building Code requirements, budget, and time constraints, to name a few, along with local conditions to consider, such as climate, topography, geology – all this before we even start looking at our client’s brief and their objectives.
Our budget for the Chapel Street Centre in Harewood Road was low and a substantial constraint so we took the approach of focussing on creating a striking worship space and to save money on the more basic meeting, office, kitchen, and sports hall areas. We were delighted to win a New Zealand Institute of Architects award for this building, proving that you don’t need the largest budget to create enduring architecture.
Sometimes ideas come from the site’s history. With the Chapel Street Centre, the previous church had a spire on the corner, so our new design – in a much more modern style – features a tall corner window that provides both light into the worship space and stands out as a landmark on Harewood Road, as the previous spire did.
As well as these pragmatic responses, architects develop more ephemeral ideas, like our design for a hotel on the bank of the Hātea River in Whangarei. This is a significant Māori heritage site, so we conceptually pulled up our waka (the hotel) onto the shore and cantilevered it out over the river. The woven pattern in the façade represents local traditional weaving designs.
In summary, creating architecture is not so much a lot of strokes of pure genius, but many conscious decisions and key ideas that have driven the architecture to not only serve a client’s functional needs but also to visually seduce and enchant.