Crisp, clean lines in architecture

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 30

Crisp, clean lines in architecture

The architects overseeing the development of the Cantebury Technology Park, and LINC Developments' architects since their beginning, are from lan Krause Architects. Their task is to vet the prospective buildings, but so far they have been responsible for the design of all the park’s architecture.

Mr Krause is enthusiastic about the project. “We've loved working with it. It's been a really exciting project. The concept of the park was to have large spaces between the buildings and to integrate the grounds and have a co-ordinated 'landscape and lighting de-

velopment. If we were able to get hold of the Russley Golf Course for the Botanical Gardens and scatter a few buildings around, that’s what the park will look like.”

There are few formal criteria set out for buildings in the park. They should have a 360 degree appeal to avoid the warehouse look of most inner city buildings, and should not be too close to residential boundaries. |

Apart from that, tlpeir design is left to the discretion of the architects and company concerned.

The LINC Development buildings are the only ones which have been

completed as yet, but construction has begun on a building for Databank and will start this month on the focal point of the park, the Canterbury Development Centre, which amongst other things will house the Canterbury Development Corporation and the Telecom fibre optic cable modem installation.

According to Mr Krause, there is one design concept running through the buildings —

but that does not mean that they will all look the same.

Form is the key. Although visitors may at first be struck by the lavish use of mirror glass.

Mr Krause says they are not concentrating on gimmicky materials to make a statement.

The glass is used where it complements and enhances the lines of the buildings, and will certainly not be present in all of them.

What will be present are crisp, clean lines and a suitably “high tech” look. “With the speed at which technology is now moving we need those sort of buildings,” says Mr Krause. “They put people in the right frame of mind to do the sort of work they're doing." The LINC Developments building, for instance, needed to be

something special. They are LINC’s world headquarters, and as such must be up to international standards. • The staff facilities, too, had to be of the highest order to satisfy the calibre of people which LINC employs.

Finally, there were areas which had to be functional, meeting the technical criteria, without losing their aesthetic appeal.

With a minimal brief and maximum flexibility, it was, according to Mr Krause, "one of the buildings which make being in architecture worthwhile.”