Ironbank Building in New Zealand
The Ironbank is a sustainable commercial office building with retail that located at road level in the Karangahape Street precinct, a distinctive and historic area on the edge of Auckland’s CBD, New Zealand. The front of the website addresses the high road which is dominated by a rich mixture of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Most of these buildings have fallen into varying states of disrepair over current decades. Designed by RTA Studio, the Ironbank building comprises: commercial office, retail, plaza and contains 95 car parks accommodated in a computerized trans-elevator car stacking machine beneath road level.interior Ironbank commercial office building with retailexterior Ironbank building facadeA strong contrast belies the urban condition of this high road against the parallel service road to the rear of the website. The back again road is mainly a service lane and has remained largely undeveloped and unplanned via its evolution. Its streetscape is therefore architecturally unconsidered and haphazard in its look.interior Ironbank building hallwaysThe building is conceived as a manifestation of a cross-contamination of the two contrasting road circumstances. The high road becoming concerned with notions of presentation, show, etiquette and heritage, while the service lane is concerned with servicing, delivery, condition and utility. The building has taken the chance to deal with a transition between these two road circumstances.exterior Ironbank building balconyThe building is contained at the high road boundary by a screen concealing the site’s interior. This screen has been considered as an abstraction of the historical facades instantly adjacent. Behind the screen the building comprises five towers of erratically stacked ‘boxes’ organized about a plaza and a via website pedestrian hyperlink. In a gesture to the finely scaled historical neighbourhood, the architects have sought to fragment the building type to alleviate the possible mass linked with a medium sized office building. Hence, five towers are additional fragmented vertically to articulate the composition of stacked office and retail spaces gathered into a socially sustainable operating neighborhood.exterior Ironbank building Ecologically Sustainably DesignedThe building is Ecologically Sustainably Designed (ESD). Accreditation for a five Green Star As-Constructed rating is presently becoming assessed by the New Zealand Green Constructing Council. The building has been designed to provide 35 small scale operating tenancies (100- 350m sq) combined at road level with retail tenancies, urban space and via website linkages to foster a sustainable communal operating atmosphere. The towers have a ventilated rain-screen façade clad in weathering metal. The screen to the high road is constructed n GRC (glass reinforced concrete). The stability of the building is a combination of metal body pre-cast and in-situ concrete. There are no exterior coatings to the building’s claddings.exterior Ironbank building glass reinforced concreteinterior Ironbank building reduced energy light fittingsThe building is completely naturally ventilated. Low-e glass, evening purging, solar h2o heating, minimal PVC content material, rainwater harvesting, reduced energy light fittings, uncovered thermal mass and mechanical car stacking are among some of the ESD initiatives incorporated into this building. The Ironbank building was commisioned in 2003 and subsequent a lengthy planning process building commenced early 2007. The project was commended in the Combined Use class of the MIPIM Architectural Evaluation Long term Tasks Awards in 2008.
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