Property Developers Willis Bond along with LT McGuiness and Athfield Architects have completed a regeneration of the Farmers site at 100 Cuba St, Wellington. The development comprises of three heritage buildings sympathetically revitalized and refurbished to create a 5900sqm modern character office space, built to 100% NBS.
The completion of this project brings Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) together under one roof for the first time since the Kaikoura earthquake in 2016.
The 2016 Kaikoura earthquake partly displaced GWRC staff from their office at Shed 39, Centreport and distributed them across three commerical locations in the Wellington CBD. In 2018 GWRC embarked on a journey to find a permanent space, where all staff could be housed in the same location.
The Farmers precinct at 100 Cuba Street was identified as an ideal location. It could be designed and built to accommodate their requirements, and placed GWRC in the heart of Wellington making them accessible to the community the organisation serves.
The design brief for the building was an empathetic transformation of the heritage site and to create a modern character space, with 100% NBS and preserving as many of the heritage features as possible.
GWRC took the opportunity to adopt a different style of working and chose to implement an open plan and activity-based work approach. This has meant introducing a variety of different work areas and functions, including a number of collaboration spaces that will be new to GWRC staff.
Sustainability and environmental protection are a core function for GWRC, so naturally it was big focus for this project. A guiding principle was to recycle and reuse as much existing furniture and fittings as possible in the Cuba Street project.
