Bell Tea Company HQ a winner
The Bell Tea Company brewed up a great success with its new office/warehouse, which has won a 2009 Auckland Architecture Award.
The awards are organised by the New Zealand Institute of Architects and supported by Resene.
Jury convenor, architect Mario Madayag, said judges were impressed by the way architects, Wingate + Farquhar had challenged the brief for the building and “worked outside the standard business park format”.
Original plans for a two-level office concept for the East Tamaki premises, a winner in the commercial architecture category, were changed to a more efficient single level plan that sits in counterpoint to the warehouse structure behind.
The company, the oldest tea business in New Zealand, employs a fully trained master tea taster and the building has its blending/tasting rooms as its central feature. Design details include ribbed cladding suggestive of a tea chest and landscaping of tea plants planted in rows.
The jury citation also noted that careful planning had minimised perimeter fencing to create a more open site that improved the industrial streetscape.
It concludes: “It is a fine example of how a thinking architect and willing clients can enrich an office-warehouse development.”
The premises are two kilometres from the main Bell production site and accommodate staff from the Bell, Burton Hollis, and Euro Espresso companies, as well as warehousing all raw materials and finished goods for the tea and coffee operations.
As well as visiting all shortlisted properties, the judges met with the architects and clients. The buildings were judged against a series of key criteria, including their contribution to the advancement of architecture as a discipline and enhancement of the human spirit.
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