A Britomart building's exterior features have been printed on protective site wrapping so the historic block doesn't disappear from view while repair work goes on.
Matthew Cockram, chief executive officer of Cooper and Company with buildings in the precinct, said he wanted to take a different approach when planning workon the 1898 Northern Steamship Building at 122 Quay St.
"Well over 10 years ago on a trip to Europe, I saw screen-printed hoardings on building refurbishment projects. I was never clear about why it was too hard to do here.
"Well, perseverance pays off. This is the Northern Steamship Building getting a new roof and sporting a cool wrap on the scaffolding," Cockram said on social media, showing how the building now looks behind its wrapping.
Jeremy Hansen of Britomart Group Management said the wrap means "the building doesn't disappear behind the covering". It cost a little more than usual construction wrap to have made, he said.
Onehunga's Ultimate Solutions made and printed that giant hoarding that covers all three levels of the block facing the waterfront.
That company supplies surface protection, hoarding and barrier products to the construction sector. It custom-prints shade cloth or scaffold screening with the names of businesses working on sites.
Custom-branded mesh is made from a porous material that allows the wind to pass through. The material has hems and eyelets so that it can be attached to fences or scaffolds.
Hansen said: "This wrap we've used is just normal building site scrim that we had custom-printed with a photograph of the building.
The Northern Steamship Company building, 122 Quay St. Photo / Peter Meecham
"Our designer Jodie Fay worked on it with Dave Bensley from our development team. We liked the idea of reminding people of what the building looks like behind the scaffolding. Lots of heritage building sites in Europe use a similar technique.
"The work on the building isn't major, just focusing on the roof as part of our ongoing capital maintenance programme. The building was fully restored in 2006 and tenants are remaining in it while the roof work is done," Hansen said today.
Brenton Newman, Ultimate Solution's sales manager, said the entire Quay St front had now been covered.
Decorative wrapping on the historic Northern Steamship Building. Photo / Supplied
"It was 17.2m high by 9.1m across the front. We installed it horizontally so it's a whole lot of individual pieces, aligned so the whole building image is reflected. We've never done anything like this before. It was the first one I know of where we printed the whole building image.
"Normally, we'd repeat the customer's logo on this type of mesh. We bring in raw PVC mesh rolls from overseas and get it printed externally in Auckland," he said.
The mesh was "challenging" to put up due to aligning it to the mirror of the building and took about two days to erect. The mesh is cable-tied on to a scaffolding.
Ultimate had many hoardings around the City Rail Link site, Newman said.
