Kumutoto Site 10

The Kumutoto Precinct is a pivot point of the Wellington Waterfront. Site 10 is central to the intersection between city, port, andwaterfront. 

A transition zone between the working port and the public domain, the development activated a tired, windswept car park. The design builds on layers of waterfront history to define a northern gateway between the waterfront and city, mending a missing link in the Quays’ boulevard, and sheltering and defining waterfront lanes around WhitmoreStreet.

The design was conceived as an assemblage of components, spaces, and functions overlapping with the waterfront landscape. The ground floor houses Café, retail and foyers, along with public colonnades, through-links, and sheltered ‘portico.’ The upper levels house large format officespace.

Although a single building, the mass is broken into two lower podium forms, split by the cross-site Harbour Wharf link. A third continuous upper level spans over the top, like a working waterfront gantry full of office workspace. While the scale and form of this flying gantry is celebrated at the southern end as a gateway marker and civic portico to Whitmore Plaza, it transitions at the North end, meeting the finer scale, elevational orders, and modulation of Shed21.

The western colonnade along Shed 21 is extended by Site 10, and the ‘gap’ between these forms creates a public cross-site link for pedestrians, delivering them from sheltered quay-side to sheltered harbour-side along the promenade, with direct links to office foyers, and to the Whitmore Plazaspaces.

The three inter-linked forms create a cohesive whole that integrates with the various conditions of open space, water’s edge, street, existing and anticipated built form in the area, providing a range of commercial and public useamenity.