Iron Giant

Words by Malcolm Walker
Photography Patrick Reynolds

RTA Studio celebrate their 10th birthday with the completion of Ironbank, their most complex and adventurous building to date.

The Auckland skyline of recent times is not generally a thing of cheer, and visiting any new addition to it is something to be approached with trepidation. In a design climate where the buildings often just fill the planning guidelines, the more promising the site, the greater the opportunity for disappointment. Ironbank occupies the old Deka site which, on the Karangahape ridge, is the perfect opportunity to screw things up. It is a great site, prominent, and in a special street with particular cultural, historical and architectural baggage. There is plenty here to run foul of or bungle. But this building doesn’t disappoint.

Ironbank is formed of five- six- and seven- storey towers of commercial tenancies. They are arranged to form an internal courtyard and a thoroughfare from Karangahape Road to its rougher cousin, Cross Street, behind. Not only content with building five towers (when one would have done just fine for most developers), the architects, RTA Studio, have displaced each floor from the one below to give the impression of kindergarten day in a shipping yard. From certain elevations, a stack of Ned Kelly rejects also comes to mind. This shuffling of levels is a neat, if complicated, trick. It is lively and provocative to look at and gives each tenancy an identity. Don’t even think of the structural and weathering problems.

From the courtyard an entertaining central lift, the shaft clad in scales of coloured glass, feeds the towers via external walkways. This is no bland corporate experience. The building matters here. Further, each tenancy has two means of egress and stairs abound, adding complexity and interest to what is, in essence, a simple notion of single stacked spaces. The architects have gone to trouble with these stairs, they are made to be used on a day-to-day basis. Perfect for smokers and athletes alike. The exterior journey, especially from the upper floors, is exhilarating.

It is a truism, but often forgotten, that it is what a building does rather than what it looks like that really counts in the long run. A seductive scale model or set of presentation drawings can fudge a flawed design. Indeed it can fool the designers as much as the clients and Ironbank, with its wit and novelty, is a good candidate for such a con job. However, there are deeper issues that have been addressed here and they will endure long after the novelty of the elevations has gone. Context is particularly important. The street photos show how well this cunning set of buildings sits on the street without aping or challenging its neighbours. The obvious maximising of the site is eschewed and the bulk of the towers is set back from Karangahape Road to let the flow of façades continue through reminding the passer-by this is K Road not Queen Street. There is no such delicacy on the Cross Street side, the towers just land bang on the boundary, as do all the other buildings in the street, and they look just fine.

South, from across the valley, the chaotic nature of the new buildings sits agreeably among the shambolic backsides of the old K Road buildings. The style is unashamedly contemporary yet the materials, new to the street – GRC concrete and rusted weathering steel – fit well with the brick and plaster of the neighbourhood. The street façade panels also serve to screen the upper balconies behind them and provide loopholes from them for views to the street below. It is interesting and useful from both sides and means this isn’t simply a façade but a working unit of the building.

At the Karangahape street level, commerce is maintained with street shops flanking the entrance to the courtyard beyond. This entrance has had criticism for being too narrow (it is a respectable 5 metres or so), however a clear call has been made to maximise the street shopfront presentation in keeping with the manner of the street and then treat the courtyard as an internal space.
Within, the courtyard is planted and the surrounding shops are able to open completely to it. It is a romantic gesture (no doubt presented with drawings of the usual café tables and umbrellas with louche café denizens sipping from complicated glasses and plenty of nonchalant shoppers sprinkled about) but internal courtyards are tricky spaces, great when they work but often planned with rose-tinted glasses and hope. Here the architects have given it every chance of success. It has been planned carefully, the courtyard is designed to be fed by the lift and the Cross Street traffic and with appropriate tenancies at its perimeter it deserves to be the lively space it promises. There is even a water feature prescribed by Feng Shui. How can you go wrong?

There is a strong and direct connection to the wonderfully manky and utilitarian Cross Street behind. (Anyone remember the mad 2am markets there in the carpark of the late ’70s?) The development also provides Cross Street with street level shops. This attention to street activity may seem obvious and it is certainly beneficial to the street and neighbourhood, but it is one often ignored or given over to carparking in many developments.

The carparking in this building is a wonder. Simply swipe your card, abandon your car, and the rest is over to a large yellow machine that sorts and files it. Don’t worry, it checks the back seat for forgotten Chihuahuas and relatives and it is carefully programmed to give you back the car you parked. (I checked, hoping I might be onto an upgrade.)

There are four levels of parking below street level, 95 cars, with the stacker saving about a third of conventional parking space requirements. One of the Cross Street shops has been given a window looking into the stacker. It’s not often architects are that proud of their parking.
The interesting thing about this development is that here, hard-nosed commercialism comes up against individuality and careful design and construction. The developers, Samson Corp, are also responsible for many other singular and enduring developments such as D72, Axis, Site 3 and Cumulus, all of which are successful and well-liked additions to the city. Ironbank is clearly not a result of experimentation or a fanciful rush of blood to the head. It is the result of experience.
Good clients make good buildings. Samson have sought out architects who are competent and able to achieve projects such as this and RTA Studio have an excellent portfolio, particularly with Samson, of rejuvenating fading commercial buildings. Buildings don’t just arrive through some magical process and it takes clients with the initial vision and understanding to be able to initiate (and fund) them. Richard Naish of RTA says Samson led the project, supporting its unconventionality and, at times, asking them to go further, to try harder. These buildings are not short-term investments. Payback comes from point of difference and quality. Special spaces allow for higher rentals and stable tenancies.

Although each floor of each tenancy is a single lettable space, interesting things happen. The differing elevations and orientations deliver views from the distant Waitakeres to adjacent roofscapes that continually surprise as one moves through the building. Far from being insular as one might expect, each tenancy looks (at a civil distance) into, onto and up to each other creating a feeling of community, far more than would occur on a subdivided floorplate.

Within each floor is a service tower, wilfully non perpendicular, serviced with the obligatory solar-heated water and decorated with an unexpected embossed wallpaper of an Edwardian pattern. This pattern is repeated in the perforated ceiling panels and stamped into aluminium sheeting which is used vigorously and in a non-Edwardian way as a soffit lining. A sly nod to Karangahape Road’s heritage.

As the mention of solar water heating hinted at, this building is green. The building has a low embodied energy, rusting weathering steel replaces paint, and there are environmental strategies in place that no doubt are a good thing, but what I like is that they are not overt. Too often green equals ugly, but not here. Solar panels roughing up the roof line are the most obvious while natural cross ventilation (very Edwardian) is the nicest.

Ironbank is brave and different but above all it is sound. Stripped of its frills the planning is clear and considered and it is exhilarating to be in. We cannot expect all new commercial buildings to be as daring or as extravagant as this but if they get even half the care and design attention that Ironbank has been given, Auckland will be a better place. Supercity take note.