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NZ International Convention Centre Auckland We were delighted to hear from Richard Archbold last week on the journey he and his team have been on in the construction of the new world class International Convention Centre in Auckland. Richard recently returned from Amsterdam where he was recognised for his work on the new convention centre which he has been involved with for the last 6 years. "It's been an interesting journey but well worth it" said Richard with a smile. His journey in life started by growing up on a country farm where he worked with nature, machinery and animals in a very pragmatic way where you had to solve challenges that were in front of you with what was available This has served him well over the years and particularly with the challenge of building New Zealand's largest convention centre which he describes as "my difficult girlfriend". This journey started in 2013 and he has worked in with a wide variety of other players on what has been a massive scale. The brief includes over 1400 drawings for what is a transformative landmark project for Auckland. In terms of how he looks at the project, Richard shared a quote that Innovation requires getting one big thing right while execution requires getting thousands of little things right. Distinguishing features involve combining architecture and engineering working together in order to find excellent solutions. At the start, however, thinking was focused on what is this structure meant to do? It was decided that it needed to reflect Aotearoa first and foremost and art was seen as a key guide to help us on our journey. Richard shared that most international conference attendees spend a significant amount of their time in the conference buildings and so this needed to strongly reflect what NZ is about. In terms of size, the centre is 3500 square metres in size and is the tallest three-storey building in New Zealand. The centre of the building houses the exhibitions at the base and a huge presentation theatre at the top. To the left the building focuses on people movement while to the right it focuses on the movement of incoming and outgoing goods. One key feature called The Spine is available to be open 24 hours when required and is one of the largest open spaces of its type in New Zealand. "We insured that we had lots of space between the building and the site boundaries in order for attendees to meet and mingle outside the building" shared Richard. Another key requirement was to maximize the flexibility and how the building was used which enables us to run huge events as well as having multiple events running side-by-side. The end product is able to house a wide variety of events which gives us a huge range of options to help meet differing customer needs. With respect to the artwork, artists worked on the building which has two of the largest art works in New Zealand. Sarah, one of our main artists, worked on how light filters through the trees which resulted in a lot of natural light coming through. The use of 3D modelling enabled us to look at a wide variety of options to help get the effects that the artists and designers wanted. By October 2018 the project was underway with all guns blazing. It needed to meet all safety requirements which included 40mm trusses being fabricated overseas and shipped to Auckland in order to manage loading. Five cranes were required on site to position them plus the use of mock-ups also enabled us to check the effects of glass including views and reflections. The team analysed results, made changes and began making final decisions on products we would use. "By August 2019 we were on the home straight and despite a major fire event in October that year we got passed it and completed the project" shared Richard as he showed us some pictures of the building and final form of this amazing building. Here is a link (click the centre of the page it takes you to) of a similar talk Richard gave last year. It’s only 21 minutes long so easy to watch over a cup of tea, and covers the general overview of the building with a focus on the art. We thanked Richard for his fascinating presentation of what is a huge asset for New Zealand in a way that includes giving especially overseas attendees a great experience of what Aotearoa is about. |
