Greater Wellington Regional Council

The perfect balance between focus and collaboration.

Location: Wellington CBD | Size: 5,900m²

Now one of the largest open-plan commercial spaces in Wellington, the Cuba Street Farmers heritage building has been transformed into a state-of-the-art workspace.

In need of a space to house all of their staff under one roof, Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) enlisted Athfield Architects and LT McGuiness to transform this iconic building into a modern, future-proofed office space.

Concentrating on a balance between collaboration and focus areas, the mixed floorplan was created to enable staff to work in a more flexible, open environment that encourages teamwork and productivity.

Keeping many of the original structural elements, including the Matai wooden floors and cast-iron columns, Athfield worked with GWRC to design a space that both complemented and accentuated the building’s heritage features with the use of nature-driven colours and textures.

The Aspect team met the brief with custom-designed soft seating for both the meeting booths and café spaces. Our Hive seating was adapted to create enclosed meeting booths along the edge of the greater open-plan areas, with acoustic features to enable casual yet focused meetings.

The Project series paired with Runway tables presented an ideal solution for open meeting and collaboration spaces, with Project mobile whiteboards featured throughout the workspace for easy brainstorming.

Aspect’s innovative Smartalock lockers were utilised throughout the office space to offer flexible personal storage that can be easily accessed with a swipe card, smartphone app or passcode at the kiosk.

The Smartalock system is a key addition to future-proof the space, and facilitates a completely agile environment where users can access their lockers from anywhere at any time.

Furniture included

Customised soft seating, Hive meeting booths, Smartalock, Project series, Skala stools, Custom banquette seating, Runway project space