What is thought to be the largest New Zealand apartment block to feature extensive Maori art work opened in Auckland this month.
The art and carvings are used on the interior and exterior of the new five-level $50 million Newmarket apartment block Hypatia and Helen O'Sullivan, chief executive of apartment developer Ockham Residential, said the 60-unit building on 246 Khyber Pass Rd was unusual for the extent of Maori art on display there.
"This is possibly the largest apartment building in Auckland to incorporate indigenous art as part of its fabric," O'Sullivan said.
Master carver Reuben Kirkwood made wood panels. Molds were then made from his designs for concrete to be poured into, to create the extensive cladding art on spandrels on the Huntly Ave, Khyber Pass and Park Rd faces of the block.
The huge block's arrival in the quiet Huntly Ave, filled with many wooden single-section houses, did not delight everyone.
In 2014 when the Herald visited, Jim Dowd of Huntly Ave - off Khyber Pass Rd - said he had no idea a 60-unit block by Ockham would soon be rising just a few doors from his stately old Huntley House, built in 1874.
A bathroom inside an apartment. Picture / Doug Sherring
Other residents of the street said they had spent fortunes doing up their homes and although they acknowledged the need for more housing, they feared increased traffic on what is now a relatively quiet tree-lined street leading to Carlton Gore Rd.
One of the building's exterior panels with the art work.
Tania Wong, Ockham's lead architect on Hypatia, yesterday showed how Kirkwood's original wood panels were used as art throughout the building. Features carved in totara around the door to the communal spa and lap pool area at the main ground-floor entrance are particularly ornate.
The carvings are clearly visible from street level.
Ockham says there was good reason to incorporate indigenous art in the building, named after the Greek neo-platonist philosopher and one of the first notable female mathematicians of ancient history.
The pool at the Hypatia apartments. Picture / Doug Sherring
"Historically, the site was home to many Maori tribes. Ockham has worked closely with Maori art designer Reuben Kirkwood the kaiwhakairo or head carver for Ngai Tai Ki Tamaki to make Hypatia one of the most artistic buildings of recent history. A modern re-working of traditional Maori design elements has been incorporated into the facade to reference the past while looking confidently to a new future."
The building's Newmarket face is stepped from top to bottom.
Features include haehae (parallel grooves and ridges), niho taniwha (dragon's tooth), unaunahi (fish scales), manaia (mythical being with the head of a bird) and rauponga (combination of haehae and niho taniwha at an angle to suggest the growth of tree fern).
Kitchen and dining inside an apartment. Picture / Doug Sherring
O'Sullivan said the block with 80 basement carparks was built on land designated as a Special Housing Area, so 10 per cent of the units had to be sold as affordable. Six units on the Khyber Pass Rd face were sold for $427,500 each, she said: two on level two, and one on levels one, three, four and five.
The lap pool, nearly 20m long, with a spa, looking out to a central courtyard at Hypatia.
Affordable is classified as 75 per cent of the Auckland metropolitan median house price.
To qualify to buy an affordable place, the purchasers had to agree to live in them and not to sell them for three years. Those six places have no balconies or carparks and are one-bedroom, 47sq m with combined living/kitchen/dining areas.
Red bricks are used on the building's exterior, along with cream bricks in other areas.
Fifty-eight of the 60 Hypatia units have been sold. Ockham has two penthouse units left: one for $2.25m, the other at $2.2m. Each has three bedrooms and they are on levels four and five.
Maori art can be seen throughout the apartment complex. Picture / Doug Sherring
Westpac funded the development, which O'Sullivan said was difficult because it was in a largely residential area.
"Two floors of basalt took nine months," she said of carpark excavations in rock beneath the site. "It was a very challenging site, working 50m from State Highway 1, close to the rail corridor and there's very little space on the site for staging," she said.
