Each slot in the facade forms an angle to deter birds. Photo / Michael Craig
Each slot in the facade forms an angle to deter birds. Photo / Michael Craig
Its exterior features fake windows and special lighting to create illuminated patterns on Anzac Day, Matariki and at other big events, as well as incorporating features designed to deter unwelcome visitors - birds.
Kiwi Property Group has finished the stylish new $63 million block at 3 Te Kehu Way, SylviaPark. Designed by Woods Bagot and Peddlethorp, it is called Geneva House, after its head tenant.
Recesses in the cladding have been carefully designed with slopes to deter birds from slotting themselves into the spaces, and leaving a reminder of their visit.
Kiwi is not anti-birds, but chief executive Clive Mackenzie says the project’s unusual cladding might otherwise have drawn the wrong sort of visitors - avian ones.
Not your average suburban offices: the new block at Sylvia Park and its dark foyer. Photo / Michael Craig
That cladding features recessed cross shapes, potentially offering birds shelter and possibly even room to pack in some nesting materials.
Mackenzie took the Herald on a tour of the block on May 4, showing off floors where tenants are already operating in new premises built by Naylor Love, which also built the mall’s new galleria and is now constructing the first apartments at the retail centre.
“The panels have a pattern with some randomised cruciform shapes to add depth and interest,” a Kiwi spokesman said.
“The smaller ‘windows’ in the panels are not actually windows, but house colour-change LED lighting that we can programme to celebrate days of national significance,” he said, referring to pink shirt day this month as one example.
Cross designs in the facade of the new office block. Photo / Michael Craig
The offices are five levels high with mixed-use tenure on the ground floor and a digital display which carries NZME’s BusinessDesk news. The floor plates are 1007sq m each and the block is directly opposite the 250-store mall.
It further fulfils Kiwi’s plans to turn Sylvia Park into a live/work/play environment: $200 million worth of build-to-rent apartments are rising in three towers at the Pak’nSave end of the shopping centre in a 295-unit expansion.
The Geneva block is the second from Kiwi, following the new ANZ building at Sylvia Park.
More than 70 per cent of the building is now tenanted and Kane Goulden, a senior leasing manager for mixed-use buildings with Kiwi, expressed satisfaction with tenant interest.
Bike storage at the new Sylvia Park office block, Geneva House. Photo / Michael Craig
More office staff are working from home, but demand is high for top-quality office space in a growing part of town like Sylvia Park, he said.
The foyer is dark with digital art and the upper levels give good views across to the Mutukaroa/Hamlin Hills Regional Park.
Mackenzie says the design has “references from the old Pūriri forests” on the site and was built on the Mt Wellington Highway side, at the end of the Sylvia Park plaza and dining lane, lined with restaurants, cafes and bars.
Alongside the new office block, Kiwi is now also completing an adjoining new healthcare centre. Tāmaki Health, Horizon Radiology, Smile Dental and others will soon be shifting in there.
Some tenants are already in the office block - with that anti-bird-roost cladding, manufactured in Pokeno.
