Project Name
William Laurie Place Office Building
Services
Architecture Design
Sector
Commercial Complex
Year of Design
2019
William Laurie Place office building is an iconic “marker building” for the Albany office precinct. It is a new mixed use office building sited on the corner of William Laurie Place and Oracle Drive. The building comprises a basement, half ground floor / upper ground floor car park, restaurant / café ground floor and seven floors of office space. OZAC Architects designed this high-profile office building for the client, and successfully obtained resource consent for a proposal, which infringed a number of key planning rules.
We designed Gross Floor Area of 6,100 sqm for a site that allowed for 5,000 sqm. The architecture of our proposal has been described as exceptional and elegant, while offsetting and mitigating potential effects resulting from any planning infringements. The façade is lifted, opening up the building to the William Laurie / Oracle Drive corner, allowing the double height ground floor lobbies and café to open out onto the plaza, which activates the space. The facades are clad in a high-performance curtain wall system, with external shading elements acting to reduce unwanted solar heat gain and glare as well as provide a privacy screening to adjacent neighbours. This affords building occupants views of Spencer Ridge Reserve to the north, elevated views to the south and allows for efficient distribution of natural light deep within the floor plates. Each facade’s sun shading strategy is dictated by orientation and privacy considerations. The facades have all been carefully considered in terms of environmental conditions, weather-tightness and maintenance and acoustic properties.