Last week at a function in Christchurch, the NZ Institute of Architects announced their award-winning new buildings for the past year.
A new office building, Brandon House in Wellington, copped the commercial building award. Check on the internet and read the judges praise for its design.
The architectural firm given the award for it, namely Studio Pacific, certainly came as a surprise given that I designed it.
Studio Pacific were engaged to simply draw up the plans, I repeat, 100% to my design.
They did offer to make suggestions and I, having been round the block when it comes to New Zealand architects, made it bluntly clear we didn’t want to hear a peep from them.
Over the past decade in Wellington and Auckland my company has spent over $50million, solely on correcting architects’ design blunders in office buildings we’ve acquired.
The single exception is the stunning 30 level SAP House in Queen Street, Auckland, which we acquired 7 years ago. We have spent a couple of million on brightening the foyer and such-like but that is trivia in the context of its size and value.
So why is it an exception to the usual design cock-ups? Simple; it was designed by an Italian architectural firm.