The Rock – Wellington Airport

With the help of PictureTalk we recently produced a video for Graphisoft. The video talks about the design process for a new terminal at Wellington Airport dubbed The Rock

The Project – The Rock, Wellington Airport

Winner, Transportation category, Inside World Festival of Interiors 2011

Finalist, Serve & Facilitate category, The Great Indoors Award 2011

Winner, Commercial Architecture Award, NZIA Wellington Architecture Awards 2011

Winner, Gold Award and Purple Pin, Spatial Design category, BEST Awards 2011

Winner, Interior Fitout Award, NZ Wood Timber Design Awards 2011

Winner, RMB Commercial Project of the Year, Registered Master Builders Awards 2011

 

A challenging brief with a double ambition meant that the redevelopment of the Wellington International Airport Passenger Terminal, completed in 2010 in association with Warren and Mahoney Architects, required a unique and innovative design.

The first task was to meet a set of complex technical specifications and optimise the available pocket building site, heavily constrained by aircraft choreography. In conjunction with external apron works, the project involved the expansion of interior open lounge floor area, new retailing, linkages from the new passenger processing area and an increase to eight aerobridge-capable gates.

As the gateway to Wellington for international passengers, the brief also demanded that the building offer a memorable visitor experience through a unique, edgy aesthetic that embodied a strong sense of place.

The oscillating outline of the new building was derived from the curved indentations of aeroplane docks into the confined triangular site. The organic irregularity of this outline dovetailed with the concept of the building as a crusty, enigmatic rock embedded in the runway – a gesture to the land’s geological past, recalling its kinship with the craggy, sea-battered Wellington coast. A radical departure from contemporary airports worldwide, preoccupied with the imagery of lightness and flight, the Rock terminal instead evokes the anchoring qualities of the land that rises to meet planes as they touch down and the coast that recedes away from them as they depart. Its copper finish is a mirror for Wellington’s swift transitions from grey sky to gold sunlight, as well as providing unparalleled durability in a corrosive environment of sea air and aircraft fuel gases.

In contrast to the bland, mall-like interiors that typify most international airports, the interior of the Rock exudes warmth and resounds with personality. Honey-coloured macrocarpa ply softens theatrical strata of dark-stained panels fissured with light. Spaces unfold on varying levels and exploration is welcomed, with journeys through the interior gently modulated by a series of ramps. Travellers are able to enjoy interior areas that are engaging and restful, impressive and intimate.

Client: Wellington International Airport Ltd.

The Company – Studio Pacific Architecture

Studio Pacific undertake a large range of projects, from small individual furniture items to large projects involving entire new towns. The small scale work includes new houses, additions and alterations, and retail work. The larger schemes include large multi-unit residential and commercial buildings as well as masterplans and landscaping.

Studio Pacific was established in Wellington in 1992 by the three directors: Nicholas Barratt-Boyes, B. Arch, ANZIA, RIBA; Stephen McDougall, B.B.Sc, B.Arch, FNZIA; and Evzen Novak, B. Arch (Hons), ANZIA, RIBA. Prior to establishing the Studio, all three directors studied and/or worked together in New Zealand before working for a period in Europe: Evzen studied in Berlin and worked in Switzerland and London, while Nick and Stephen were based in London and worked on projects throughout the U.K. and Europe.

The collective international experience gained by the directors in Europe set the platform and influenced the direction of the practice. From early design competitions and small residential commissions Studio Pacific has evolved into an award-winning substantial and creative practice with diverse projects throughout New Zealand. Particular recognition has been given to the studio for working with the arts, urban regeneration, housing, masterplanning and contemporary workspace planning.

Marcellus Lilley – Associate, Lead Project Architect for The Rock

B.B.Sc, B.Arch, ARB (UK), ANZIA

Marcellus Lilley joined Studio Pacific in 2003 and has been an Associate since 2005. Marcellus has a Bachelor of Building Science and a Bachelor of Architecture from Victoria University of Wellington, and has completed post-graduate study at Westminster University, London en-route to becoming a registered architect in the United Kingdom. He is also a New Zealand registered architect.

Marcellus has broad experience in urban renewal, mixed-use and multi-unit residential projects during five years of working in London, and before that, education and residential projects in the Hawkes Bay. Since joining Studio Pacific, Marcellus has been lead Project Architect on the MOTAT Aviation Display Hall project, the Wellington International Airport Terminal Development Project (Stage 01 and Stage 02) in addition to various smaller commercial and civic projects and competition work such as the Royal Society of New Zealand Campus.

Marcellus also co-ordinates the Studio systems group (SPARK) that monitors and develops the Quality Management System utilised by the Studio.

He has travelled extensively and maintains a keen interest in design and the delivery of projects through the role of Project Architect.

Karl Frost – Senior Technician

Karl graduated with a Bachelor of Building Science degree with Honours from Victoria University in Wellington in 1990. He started in the building industry with Jasmax, working on the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand project in the Auckland office for 2 years and then on-site in Wellington for 2 more years. This was followed by a brief stint overseas before he returned to Wellington in 1999 and joined Studio Pacific Architecture. Since then he has worked on a wide range of urban and commercial projects.

Karl is one of Studio Pacific’s most experienced CAD users, skilled in both modelling and documentation. He has worked as a team member on a number of commercial projects as a CAD leader and technician. His experience is invaluable for coordinating CAD information between Studio Pacific and other consultants.

A new look – work in progress

As they say, good things take time – though I guess it’s not up to me to say if it is good or not!

Anyway back in August last year David from Buildmedia took the original photo from my blog and modelled, rendered and composited it to come up with the header above.

It has taken me the last 8 months to get round to updating my blog to a new theme that better suited the new image. So here it is!

Although it is now live I can’t quite take it off my to do list as there are a number of tweaks I still want to make to the site. So keep an eye out over the next few weeks as I find time to make the final adjustments!

 

Developing Better Boards

There has been a lot of discussion over the last while about the need for New Zealand companies to focus on developing better boards. These discussion are as varied as talking about the importance of a formal Board of Directors for SMEs through to creating diversity on the boards of New Zealand’s publicly listed companies.

SpringBoard NZ is an organization that was set up to encourage younger people to take up board positions and to encourage companies to appoint younger directors.

SpringBoard has now led to a new website that is focused on Appointing Better Boards and to keep it really obvious that is what the website url is - http://www.appointbetterboards.co.nz/

On the subject of diversity the NZX have recently released a consultation document. Not overly surprising is the submission being made by SpringBoard is that diversity of age is as important as other forms of diversity.

For those of you interested in governance I strongly recommend looking at both SpringBoard and Appoint Better Boards – if you are interested in roles or have a board opening make sure to sign up.

 

New Zealand Home of the Year 2012 – Finalist

I have written before about the commitment Graphisoft New Zealand makes to Education and also our annual support of the Graphisoft NZIA Student Design Awards.

Another area where we support architectural eduction is with an annual Studio Project run by Dave Strachan from SGA at Unitec.

The project takes students through the design, documentation and construction of an actual building project.

We support the project via way of providing ArchiCAD Software, Training and James from our office provides support during the studio time.

Anyway, to cut to the actual point it was very rewarding to see the 2010 Studio Project named a finalist in the New Zealand Home of the Year 2012 competition. This follows on from an NZIA Local Award.

While the house didn’t win home of the year, this is wonderful recognition for a group of students yet to complete their studies and enter the work force.

Better by Design CEO Summit

Today I was at the first day of the Better by Design CEO Summit.

Better by Design’s sole purpose is to help New Zealand businesses succeed. Our programmes are built on the principle that design strategies and processes can be applied to businesses to improve the bottom line.
Better by Design is a specialist group within New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, New Zealand’s national economic development agency.

I was fortunate to sit next to Lance (Wiggs) and very fortunate that they way he ‘listens and absorbs’ the information is to type it up and blog about it.

This means I (along with all attendees) have a great set of posts to refer back to in addition to any notes we took ourselves.

The day was varied but generally of an extremely high standard and was very thought provoking. At the end of the day we had little group sessions where we shared with the group what we took away from the day, I found this a very good way to solidify about 2 key points that I expect will have an impact on our business in the short-term.

I am looking forward to another great day tomorrow.

Xero Con 2012 – and recent announcements

Last year I attended Xero Con 2011 – New Zealand’s largest accounting conference run by Xero. While spending a day in a room full of accountants may not sound like your cup of tea the presentations last year where great – and not all to do with accounting.

Tomorrow is Xero Con 2012 which this year I’m not attending – instead I attended their Developer Session today to get an update on what is going on behind the scenes and a roadmap for 2012. The room we were in was full with probably 100 developers who connect with Xero. This is an often unseen benefit of the Xero Ecosystem.

In light of the big conference tomorrow Rod and the team have made some big announcements over the last week including a revenue update.

Over the last year or so Xero has certainly polarized the New Zealand investment community after they abandoned the strategy of reaching profit in the short-term and instead decided it was better to focus on growth.

Since then every article published on the NBR has drawn interesting comments – to the point where today, when Xero announced a further $20 million investment, there was even some prodding taking place to get things started.

While I can understand that investors would like to see profit and a return, those who are unhappy with the current strategy can probably make a return by selling their shares which have remained at the top end of their trading range – and increased again today on the back of the announcement. I would also suggest people need to take a wider view and not judge a book by its cover, or by simply what they read.

Listening to the team today there is no doubt they work hard on both developing and executing their strategy. The numbers that Xero are reporting are continuing to grow (rapidly) which indicates they are on the right path.

The other thing that many people may not see from the outside but was on show today was the eco system I mentioned earlier. There are many other New Zealand entrepreneurs that are building web applications that integrate with Xero and are able to take advantage of this partnership. Some like Vend are seeing success even though they are still very much a startup. Others are more grown up like Workflow Max that was acquired by Xero today.

While these other businesses don’t necessarily provide a return to Xero shareholders they are in general very good for the New Zealand economy. Xero is not in this game just for themselves and very much take the approach of wanting to lift all boats. While today was predominantly about Xero development there were aspects of the talks aimed at helping people in the room with their own business. This is a great culture to create in a business.

Another way of Xero – or more specifically Rod – likes to give back is through his Accelerate Conference which I am very much looking forward to.

Disclaimer:  I am both a shareholder in Xero and one of their original beta customers and now run 10 organisations in Xero. 

 

NZ Start-up Scene

For anyone interested in the state of play in the New Zealand start-up scene, or anyone who likes to read what has worked or not worked when building a business check out Rowan Simpson’s Founder Centric Startups Series.

The series is an amazing piece of work and all credit has to go to Rowan and the contributors for making this happen.

The stories are all good and certainly shows there is no script when it comes to creating / running a startup. What works for one doesn’t necessarily apply to another.

My perspective has always been to read and research material like this and take out what I think may work for my businesses. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we make mistakes, but the most important thing is we review and we learn.

In parallel with this series both Rowan(as an intro to his series) and Lance (Are you an Angel – probably not and Investing with appropriate speed) commented on the structures that support startups – this stirred up a great debate, one that is extremely healthy as New Zealand strives to grow the knowledge economy.

2011 – A brief look back

I have been planning on writing this post since the first day of 2012 and am only now getting round to it and we are almost 5% into the year! [Updated: I didn’t complete this till the 19th January so we are now over 5% into the year!]

One year ago I was beginning my 15th year at Cadimage Group (formally Cadimage Solutions) and my 7th year as the Managing Director.

In general I spend more time thinking about the future than looking at the past, but I find it good as I plan for a New Year to review and reflect on the previous year.

Without going into a huge amount of detail as I look back on 2011 I would  say that like most years Cadimage Group has achieved a lot. A few highlights across our Group include:

GRAPHISOFT New Zealand

We started there year by reaffirming our commitment to Architectural Education in New Zealand by sponsoring the Victoria University FirstLight House. This was the first time a Southern Hemisphere team had been picked to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. As keen observers we followed the progress both in New Zealand in preparation and then in the US as they were competing and we were stoked to see them take out third place.

In mid-year we released ArchiCAD 15 throughout New Zealand. This was the first time I had visited Christchurch since the disastrous earthquakes and I was a little nervous. Overall I was impressed with the resilience being shown by our Christchurch based customers and there approach to simply getting on with the job at hand.

The end of the year saw the fourth year of the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards which saw 60 Architecture Students receive prize money totaling $60,000 and Software to the value of $30,000.

Cadimage

2011 started with us securing the distribution for Solibri Model Checking Software in New Zealand and Australia. Taking on a new product is a major undertaking and we were pleased to complete the year with a  handful of sales and a strong position for 2012.

In March we launched a couple of new websites which marked the completion of the Strategic Branding work we had done with Brian Richards and his team.

Mid-year in conjunction with the ArchiCAD 15 release we released the updates to all our Tools. This is the sixth successive version where we have launched our Tools on the same day as the ArchiCAD International release. June was a record month for our export sales in conjunction with the ArchiCAD 15 Upgrade but this was short-lived with July trumping June by a further 15% increase.

Later in the year we expanded our website to include additional ArchiCAD software from different suppliers and relaunched ArchiCAD Objects.

Overall we have continued to grow our international business during a tough world economic climate. While growth is not at the level we would hope for progress is being made!

Cadconsult & Cadconsult PLM

In October the biggest event of the year took place with the merger of Cadconsult into the Cadimage Group and the formation of Cadconsult PLM.

Andrew Ecker the founder of Cadconsult has been involved with ArchiCAD as our South Island Reseller for 20 years and has also been selling and supporting Solid Edge Mechanical Engineering software since 1997. We merged the South Island ArchiCAD business in to GRAPHISOFT New Zealand and created Cadconsult PLM to focus on the Sales, Service and Training of Solid Edge and a number of other Siemens PLM Velocity Products.

As with all mergers there have been challenges and teething issues but 3 months in the entire team is excited about this achievement and the platform it has created for 2012.

Cadimage Team

As a result of the merger and growth we were pleased to see our team expand by 3 full-time and 2 part-time people. The New Zealand economy has had a bumpy recovery and still has a long way to go but I do enjoy being able to grow and expand our team.

Personal

On the personal side there were a few achievements as well. In April I took [almost] a month off. The reasons behind this were two-fold. One, it was time to have a break and, Two, it was a chance for others within the company  to take the lead. While in hindsight the timing was not necessarily the best the team stepped up and as mentioned above we achieved a successful launch of ArchiCAD 15 and our Tools.

Running

In 2010 I ran 15 times for a total distance of 105km – the main catalyst was being stuck in Hungary as the Icelandic Volcano did it’s thing. As a result of this lack of exercise (and a couple of other factors) the pounds went on. 2011 started and I wasn’t overly impressed with my weight so I started running. For the first time in a long time I ran without a goal or an event in mind. Over the year I lost almost 10% of my weight and for the first time since I have been tracking it I ran every month of the year. As I was not training for an event I gave myself little goals. The one I am most proud of was the goal of running ten, 10km runs in May. Over the course of the month I managed to achieve 13 runs and took a total of 5 mins off my time.

By the end of the year I had clocked up 82 runs for a total of 753km.

Sports

2011 saw the Rugby World Cup come to town and I was finally able (after two previous attendances) to see the All Blacks lift the trophy (just.) Having watched France knock out the All Blacks at my two previous World Cups I was almost banned from attending the pool match where the All Blacks made up for Cardiff. In the end I managed to watch 11 of the 20 teams play live and ended up watching the French 3 times!

2011 closed with me attending the Boxing Day Cricket Test at the MCG. While India didn’t live up to their quality on paper the MCG test has proved to be the closest in the series so far. The MCG is an incredible ground and attending a test match with 70,000 people on the first day and a total of 190,000 over the 4 days was something quite unreal.

Travel

2011 saw me make two European trips. One for the Graphisoft International Partners conference in Berlin and later a trip through Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and the UK where I finished up attending the ArchiCAD Summer School held in Liverpool.

Overall I was away from home for 56 days which is a reasonably significant amount of time and in 2012 am looking to stay closer to home and allow other members of the team the opportunity to attend these events.

2012

As our business continues to change we continue to look forward and plan ahead. 2012 is shaping up to be challenging for us with potential European recessions on the back of the Euro issues and with ongoing quakes in Christchurch the rebuild is further delayed. However, we have a number of exciting initiatives planned and with a bigger team we are all excited about the year ahead.

 

Previous Posts:

2010 – A year in review

2009

The Air NZ OneSmart Card

Just before Christmas Air New Zealand sent me my new Airpoints Card – The OneSmart Card. They couldn’t have done better with the name as it truely is one smart (and useful) card.

Having spent the last week in Melbourne for the Boxing Day Test I was able to test all the functions on the card.

Aside from being my Airpoints Card the OneSmart Card allowed me to:

  • Add money to the card as a MasterCard Debit Card
  • Once the money was added I created an AUD ‘wallet’ and converted some of my NZD to AUD.
  • Once in Australia I withdrew money (though note this was taken from my NZD balance – not sure why but I think this is still better than a standard international ATM withdrawal)
  • The MasterCard is also a PayPass card so once at the MCG I was able to ‘tap and go’ at the bars and food outlets. This is similar to what was available at the Rugby World Cup but I didn’t get a card for that as there were a few funny rules around it.
  • The card is also a chip based card so when PayPass wasn’t available I could still use it like a standard credit/debit card.

All the transactions (except the cash withdrawal) used my AUD balance so no conversion fees.

The card also can be managed via your mobile phone using YAP but I haven’t had the need to try that yet.

Air New Zealand have done extensive work before launching the card and I am most impressed it the simplicity and cleanliness of the website. I am easily able to convert money to multiple currencies and clearly see all the transactions. I was also able to set it up to email me every time a transaction takes place, and many times the email arrived before I’d even had time to pick up my food and leave the checkout.

All and all I have been most impressed with my new card, while I don’t plan to travel as much in 2012 as I have previously, it certainly made things very quick and simple – great work Air New Zealand.

Why Did GRAPHISOFT Immortalize Steve Jobs?

On December 21st 2011, Gabor Bojar the founder of GRAPHISOFT unveiled a statue of Steve Jobs in Graphisoft Park.

Steve Jobs had a profound impact on the entire world so some may wonder why GRAPHISOFT took the step of commissioning a sculpture.

GRAPHISOFT and Apple have had a long association which is explained well by Mary from Graphisoft North America.