The Otuawhaki Visitor Centre is located on a prominent site at the eastern end of the town’s commercial district, the new visitors’ centre overlooks the Whakatane River and its mouth to the sea.

The form of the building is a simple curve responding to both the curving road in front of the site and the meandering river behind. A flat roof limited the height of the building and hence its impact on views. Extensive glazed canopies, verandas and fabric sunshades help bring the building to life and give it the required ‘prominence’ sought by the brief.

Ocean Spa Napier, completed in January 2003, was designed in conjunction with aquatic engineering specialists LHT Design. Conceived as an aquatic experience unique in New Zealand, the complex provides a mix of aquatic, leisure and fitness facilities, and includes a variety of heated pools to suit a number of activities and age groups, and three separate buildings with varying functions.

This building provides 4000sqm of secure warehouse, a 1200sqm covered loading canopy, plus 200sqm of offices for Fliway Logistics operations at Auckland Airport.

ASC Architects' involvement in this project was more than designing the new building; we assisted the school in planning for an 80 percent growth in its student roll.

The particularly challenging aspects were the requirements to work on the project while the school ran as usual, and not building over any part of the site that did not already accommodate buildings.

Willowbank Primary School in Howick opened in April 2001 with a roll of 87 children, nine teachers and three auxiliary staff, but now caters to around 850 children with a staff of 60. The site was originally in a rural fringe environment but now the school finds itself in the centre of a fast growing suburban area.

This project was the first of five new buildings that ASC Architects completed on Epsom Girls Grammar School site over the course of 10 years.

The school underwent significant expansion fueled by exploding immigration into the Auckland CBD, with the roll going from around 1500 to over 2000 students. This growth occurred on a site that was only ever large enough to accommodate 1000 students.

Interior fit out projects can provide designers with exciting opportunities to explore ideas of space, representation, image, comfort and function - all in specific regard to a particular user group or activity.

This design project afforded such an opportunity - we were to create a public/private interface for the offices in the BJ Ball building in Graham Street, where the council was to move.

Somerville Intermediate is a co-educational school intelligently designed to accommodate 700 students in Auckland's eastern suburb of Howick.

Extensive research and community consultation led us to develop a whanau (extended-family-within-the-school) concept in buildings flexible enough to provide 21st century learning environments.

The advertising agency wanted a semi open plan working environment that enabled the strong interplay between creative and business executives to occur naturally.

Consequently, our fit out of the attic floor of this waterfront building was one of the very earliest open plan office work spaces developed in Auckland. Even though architects had been working in this sort of environment for decades, the benefits of open plan had not yet filtered to other business sectors.

Ronald McDonald House is a home away from home for families of children with life threatening conditions who are receiving treatment at Auckland Hospital.

We were commissioned to deliver from concept design through to the provision of construction management services and, subsequently, to complete two major extensions to the house.

The National Bank's objective was for the new building to convey its culture of innovation and excellence to its customers. The building was the first to be constructed in Karangahape Road under then-new road facade design guidelines. Specific criteria included an appearance complementary to adjoining buildings, a continuity of facade levels, and a proportion of solid material and voids and glass of at least 50 per cent.

Simple materials such as corrugated steel cladding, structural steel and cedar cladding have contributed to the evolution of an inspired beach house located on a site with spectacular views to offshore islands on the Coromandel Peninsula.

In keeping with the clients’ expectations of a simple holiday lifestyle, a terracotta floor that extends to an outside terrace reinforces a casual dialogue between internal and external spaces.