Success in fitting building to site

Press, 19 December 1984, Page 46

Success in fitting building to site

For its significant and impressive contribution to low cost speculative warehouse and office design, the commercial complex on the Brougham Street expressway, opposite Sydenham Park was honoured with a Canterbury branch architect award.

The architects, Charles R. Thomas and Associates, were required to design three warehouse, office and showroom units on a very long, narrow site, for low cost in order to make the

development viable. The warehouses and doors also had to be high enough to take container trucks. Contrasting forms were used for the different functions of the buildings, and care was taken with the street scene, not only to take advantage of the view across the park, but also to provide an attractive facade. The office and showroom areas were given a large sloping roof to bring the

areas open to the public and occupied by staff down to a human scale. Car parks are shielded behind screen walls which also serve as company sign panels. Planting, with trees, shrubs and ground cover, provides a Jink with the median • strip and park. Boundary walls were built of concrete tilt slab. The office and showrooms have bronze anodised aluminium windows, and hardiflex sloping sills.

Jury members said that they were impressed with the bold composition of strong forms and elements that relate well to the scale of the expressway. “The group of buildings make a significant contribution towards improving the standard of the low cost speculative warehouseoffice complex of which there have been too many environmentally disfiguring examples in recent years,” the jury said.