McKenzie Higham Architecture
Project Location:
Newtown, Wellington
Categories:
Commercial Architectural Excellence
Project Description:
The brief required a 40 place early childhood education centre on an existing Church site. The need for the design to be culturally relevant was not explicit, but quickly became a guiding principle for the design team.
The site already contained two distinctive existing buildings both adopting the fale structure of their Samoan community. Our design idea envisaged the completion of a family of fale structures.
This form is all about structure and in this project is distinctive and highly visible. Clearly demonstrating to users how it is constructed is very much part of its success.
Wherever possible we have offered opportunities for the client community to customise their building. The street edge precast panels use stylised frangipani to form a vibrant textured statement of entry and externally colour is used to delineate the main spaces.
The building deliberately seeks to be culturally relevant, appropriately scaled and very obviously a Samoan early childhood centre.