Ideas burn brighter in green workshop

David Trubridge and his Whakatu-based design team are moving to a warmer climate - albeit just 500 metres down the road.

Nine years after Cicada Works set up camp in an old, cold, former Whakatu meatworks joinery room, the award-winning 15-staff team has moved to a purpose-built workshop with underfloor heating and a temperature the designer claims is more conducive to productivity.

The innovative Station St workshop boasts new machinery, more floor space and, "most exciting of all", a public gallery.

"The biggest thing for me was getting a showroom," Mr Trubridge said.

"The old place [Whakatu Industrial Park] was hidden and the public weren't allowed in there ... we had no public face.

"We wanted a space where we could hang big lights. Clients would come to see us at work and we had nothing to show them."

After a fruitless search to find a new site, the company director gave his landlord a sketch of what he wanted, with a brief that the building be "as green as possible".

The result, he claims, is "the first wooden commercial building in Hawke's Bay".

With timber's favourable carbon rating compared with steel and concrete, wood was used for the workshop's cladding, roofing and framing.

Fittingly, Mr Trubridge now has the rare privilege of designing within one of his designs.

The bigger 11,000sq m floor space was commensurate with increased demand for the company's award winning furniture and lighting products through distributors in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, the US and Europe.

"I will miss the old place. I loved the old brick building but it was too small and we were wasting time just moving stuff around.

"We've now got a bigger, central, more efficient space."

While it will be formally opened in November, the showroom on the corner of Station Rd and Groome Place, Whakatu, is now open to the public five days a week.