Green By Design
The near-complete Christchurch Civic Building is an iwi expression of manaakitanga, of Ngāi Tahu caring for its people, and of kaitiakitanga – guardianship of the environment. These guiding principles have led joint-venture partners Ngāi Tahu Property and Christchurch City Council to construct New Zealand’s greenest building.
The Civic Building is located on Worcestor Boulevard almost adjacent to the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.
Assessed by the New Zealand Green Building Council, it was recently awarded the maximum six Green Star Office Design rating, achieving a record 83 points. Such a standard has never before been reached by a New Zealand building, putting it in the World Leadership Category.
The rating system evaluates the environmental attributes and performance of buildings. It looks at management, indoor environment quality, energy, transport, water, materials, land use and ecology,
emissions and innovation.
Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu kaiwhakahaere Mark Solomon says to construct a green, energy-efficient and healthy building makes environmental and economic sense.
“I think there’s a general perception out there that building sustainably is going to cost far more than building something more status quo. In fact the two options – green or standard – are, financially speaking, not miles removed. If you examine ongoing operating costs, an environmentally efficient building will save money right from the starting blocks of its leased life.”
The City Council is projected to save $1.3 million in energy costs for the building annually, thanks to a tri-generation system, which will generate electricity from landfill gas, a renewable energy source. This will be piped from the council’s Burwood landfill site and converted into electricity within the building. The building will also have mostly solar-powered water heating.
Such ongoing energy savings will become increasingly crucial to future generations, Solomon believes.
The national adoption of an emissions trading scheme, he adds, will bring with it a whole raft of automatic price hikes; not just to power, but to food, petrol and every other consumer item, especially hurting the poorest in society.
“We know there’s a looming urgent environmental problem. We can either react now or face the consequences of climatic change. I would far rather do the former. I’m proud the joint venture team has acted to ensure our Christchurch people don’t face unbearably rocketing consumption costs to run their civic premises in future decades.”
To receive green star rating points for the project’s recyclable waste, the construction team had to recycle 70 per cent of demolition and construction materials. Building contractors Hawkins Construction went a step further and endeavoured to recycle everything possible. Numerous defined recycling skips lining the Hereford Street site bear witness to a dedicated effort that has resulted in 88 per cent of unused materials being correctly channelled toward another useful incarnation. In carbon savings that’s significant.
Kaitiakitanga – a constant key consideration for Ngāi Tahu Property – has long resonated with the Christchurch City Council.
In 2004, the Council’s Civic Building Group talked about sustainability and its wish to house all council staff in a large, ideal working space, characterised by a minimal carbon footprint.
The group set a goal of achieving a minimum environmental accreditation rating of five stars for the building that would become the new council staff premises.
In 2006 Ngāi Tahu Property proposed a joint-venture partnership between iwi and the City Council. And in 2007 it was settled the former Post Office Mail Centre was the ideal building to renovate to become the new council headquarters.
Mayor Bob Parker says the mail centre was his first choice.
“Though quite ugly and from the Brutalist era of architecture, it had enormous strength and its location in the cultural heart of the city gives it a high amenity value.”
Ngāi Tahu Property’s chief executive Tony Sewell would love to think future generations of Ngāi Tahu citizens will feel a sense of pride in knowing the building expresses manaakitanga along with respect and concern for its ownership partners, its tenants and visitors.
Architect Ian Athfield’s vision for the space was to echo and underline the character of the city it will serve.
He’s created a particularly Cantabrian design which takes its cues from the strongly seasonal nature of Christchurch, and its grid-like street pattern.
Athfield says his design simultaneously respects the strength of the existing former mail centre building, while creating a new identity as the Civic Building of Christchurch, fit for the next century.
The new-look building, which maximises views to the south and north, is intrinsically hospitable and has been opened up structurally and visually.
From the inside, staff and the visiting public are afforded an expansive outlook over the immediate cityscape, and then further in each direction to both the Horomaka (Port Hills) and Kā Tiritiri o Te Moana (Southern Alps).
From the outside, Athfield has designed “an open window to the democratic operations” of the Council.
Overseeing the project for Ngāi Tahu Property, Gordon Craig has been ever-mindful to ensure the city’s civic hub is accessible to all, and that it has a welcoming aesthetic. He fine-tuned the Hereford Street entrance way recently by removing a structural beam to open the space further.
Craig has worked with a group of Christchurch’s top technical consultants including James Jackson of RCP, Malcolm Timms of Rider Levett Bucknall, and Sam Seatter and the wider team of Powell Fenwick Consultants Ltd, plus Athfield Architects and Ecubed.
In its former life as a mail centre, windows, light and space were not abundant. That’s a thing of the past with the removal of about 200 external panels of concrete, each weighing upward of 4.5 tonnes, some of which are being re-used in landscaping of the Worcester Boulevard ramp.
In addition, inside the building the pathways have been designed to encourage conversation with shallow-stepped and wide stairs, which are now located out on the building’s northern transparent edge.
“The pedestrian layout will encourage sociability and create a mixing space for the cross-pollination of ideas from different departments within council,” says Craig.
Also encouraged is the practice of walking, cycling or running to work. Rather than an emphasis on car parking, 188 bike park spaces are provided, along with 24 spacious showers.
The development has also incorporated a café and a publicly accessible lane through the building from Hereford Street to a new tree-lined ramp on Worcester Boulevard.
The next few months are an exciting time for the joint-venture team, as members oversee the final additions of interior details, textures and materials. Yet to come is an outside water feature populated by bronze water creatures, and a large pou carved by Ngāi Tahu mastercarver Fayne Robinson that will rise from the lower part of the stream. Inside the building, a huge pounamu will greet visitors.
The building is due to be blessed at a dawn ceremony on August 11. The 96-year agreement lease has already been signed and the City Council will begin its tenancy following the blessing. The first council meeting at the new site is scheduled for 26 August.
Parker says he is looking forward to occupying his new office on the building’s sixth floor, which features its own slice of balcony space.
He, Sewell and Craig are also pleased the building project is on time and on budget.
Sewell says throughout the project, the building team has employed true partnership ideals. His sentiments are echoed by Parker and Gill Cox, Chair of the Joint-Venture Committee.
Solomon sees such partnerships between the iwi and others – be they local authorities, the Crown, or tertiary institutions – as an ideal platform for future developments of any magnitude.
“An iwi is in a fundamentally different position from that of a simple business or company which might be wound up after say 25 years. It’s multi-generational; the family that never dies.”
Parker agrees it makes sense for both iwi and for the local authority to partner with institutions also characterised by longevity, and to invest in our national infrastructure, rather than anything tenuous or fleeting.
Solomon reasons “no matter how bad any future economic recession gets, such public buildings will still be crucial to civic life; they’ll still be in commission”.
Cox says while the joint-venture group members had faced several challenges, more of which might be expected yet, there had been no insurmountable problems given the strong culture of co-operation, shared vision, and unshakeable “commitment to the positive big picture” for the future of the jointly owned building.
March 31st, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Congratulations on what appears to be a model project hitting all the important goals of the age. A positive piece of news we can all be proud of.