KEY POINTS:
Glass-walled offices hang off vertical internal drops, giving the impression of workers being suspended at transparent posts.
Only the vague sight of floors suspended five levels up inside gives any evidence that the building's occupants are not floating near the ceiling.
In a structure akin to a giant birdcage, spans of steel-floored glass-sided air bridges - each weighing eight to 10 tonnes - are suspended above and beneath floors, giving those in transit clear views of others in meeting rooms, at their desks or in the internal street cafe.
One box-like office painted a startling yellow dangles like an exclamation mark in mid-air, three levels up, jutting out from a glass-walled space where people are gliding about like goldfish.
A bank of gleaming transparent glass and steel lifts drift quietly between the floors.
Welcome to Takapuna's Sovereign House, a new building which could be the country's most revolutionary and experimental office block.
This rebel among new building designs is a challenge to traditional commercial real estate design and construction.
Little wonder, then, that it was planned by a radical duo.
The space was designed by the same architectural partnership which won international recognition for ASB's building at Albany.
Auckland's Jasmax and Australian firm Bligh Voller Nield worked together on C:Drive, the challenging commercial building for 500 ASB staff at 33 Corinthian Drive.
In 2002, that building was one of 11 winners in the Business Week-Architectural Record Awards in Washington. Now, the partnership has designed one of the largest new Smales Farm buildings and their work has already been recognised twice in the past three months.
Last month, Sovereign House won a merit prize in the Property Council's commercial building awards. In April, it won an Institute of Architects national award, although John Walsh, editor of Architecture New Zealand, said ASB might consider itself unlucky not to win a subsequent supreme award announced in May.
The Sovereign job is so significant that ASB published a book explaining the building's genesis. From the inside/out is a 90-page full-colour account of the rationale behind the structure's challenging and unusual design. ASB had 500 copies printed and the book has floor plans of the five-level structure, explanations on its eco-friendly chilled beam air-conditioning, unorthodox lighting design and project management.
Polished concrete floors, internal outlook lines designed for maximum horizontal and vertical views and complete exposure of services like heating and air-conditioning are just some of the unusual aspects of this building.
The transparent glass-walled offices, changing floor levels and different flooring materials delineating areas are other hallmarks of the structure which required 112 steel-driven piles to be planted into the greenfields site and the excavation of 15,000 cubic metres of material.
Plywood, concrete, steel and glass are some of its major elements and Derek Shortt, ASB Property general manager, acknowledged some elements of C:Drive have reappeared in Sovereign.
"But the architects said this is far more advanced than anything in Australia, which has far more conservative commercial buildings" Shortt said, standing in Sovereign's foyer.
Last month, Shortt invited the Herald to tour the building with James Grose, principal of Bligh Voller Nield and together they told how creating what appears now to be a relatively simple design was actually extremely complicated.
"Don't underestimate how making something incredibly simple is monumentally more difficult," Grose said, adding that Sovereign was the most advanced commercial project of its type in New Zealand or Australia. Its architecture was not so much about how it looked but more about how the building felt and how it worked, he said, and Sovereign would become the benchmark by which other buildings were judged.
The building's origins sprang from the need to consolidate.
Sovereign, New Zealand's largest life insurance business, had more than 750 staff on five Takapuna sites.
In 2005, Mainzeal Property & Construction won the contract to build new offices and its site presence peaked with 280 workers. One of its biggest challenges was achieving perfection because of the transparent and exposed nature of the building's design. Parts of a building normally hidden are on show at Sovereign, forcing the builders to lay precast concrete with seamless junctions.
Walsh compared Sovereign to C:Drive. "Sovereign is like a super-evolved version of C:Drive. There's an element of 'you must have fun' in C:Drive which isn't in Sovereign. You might not want to be matey and jokey and you might get pissed off with the petanque players in C:Drive. You might just want to go to work to do work and that's where Sovereign is far more sophisticated, done more for grown-ups." Walsh said.
He acknowledges Sovereign would hardly rate a second glance from the outside but says that is partly its brilliance - and hence the book's title referring to a building designed from the inside out.
"There's a lot of subtle social engineering going on in Sovereign. It has a lot of generous spaces to give people a change to get away from each other yet also encouraging social interaction in cafe areas and movement around the building," he said.
He does have a few reservations, particularly about the the giant screen used for corporate communication above the building's internal cafe. He also wonders how comfortable people in Sovereign feel, as managers in glass boxes keep a watching brief on the staff.
But overall, Walsh praised the building and particularly Shortt who he said should be acknowledged as an adventurous commercial developer for such innovative structures as C:Drive and Sovereign House.
"Shortt obviously gives architects a lot of leeway and he's found an architect he trusts in Grose who is not going to give the client something he doesn't want," said Walsh.
STATE OF THE ART
* Sovereign House is located at Smales Farm, Takapuna.
* Built by Mainzeal Property & Construction.
* $66 million offices for 750 people.
* Leased by Sovereign for 18 years.
* Sovereign is part of ASB group.
