Sandringham Plunket Sandringham Road
CONTEXT
When the Sandringham Plunket and Playgroup facility burned down
as a result of arson one Guy Fawkes night, the community got
together to write a brief for a redesign that would be innovative,
flexible, contemporary, cost-effective and energy efficient.
Sandringham Plunket borders a public park and residential
housing.
DESIGN
Flexibility of use and adaptation of facilities to more that one
function is more than a pragmatic ideal; it can also be approached
as an extension of sustainability in terms of resourcefulness and
longevity.
An innovative low budget building designed as a flexible use
facility that caters for the needs of Plunket nurses and associated
children's playgroups from the surrounding community.
The project had to meet the brief of 3 stakeholders; Auckland City
Council as the owner, Plunket as the majority user, and Community
playgroups as the secondary user.
The building features a naturally lit "Outdoor Room" to encourage
year-round all weather play, an easy clean up surface with decking
flowing from the interior to the exterior, and large opening clear
acrylic sheet sectional folding door.
A modern interior décor is reflected through colour linking of the
Plunket logo to featured door colours, complimentary carpet tiles
and vinyl.
The design responds to Council's CPTED (Crime prevention through
environmental design) policy and is applied through planting around
the Southern/Eastern walls of the façade and fence, and the use of
a "random" overbatten fixed to the ply façade, in order to create
"disturbed" surfaces with the objective of deterring tagging.
ESD principles feature in passive solar heating through retention
of the winter sun heating the floor mass, passive cross-ventilation
for summer cooling, "super-insulated" southern wall with no
penetrations and external vertical slat screening of western
windows to minimise heat from afternoon summer sun.
NZIA New Zealand ARCHITECTURE AWARD WINNER 2011
NZIA LOCAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD WINNER 2010
Nzia RESENE COLOUR AWARD WINNER 2010
"This project uses ordinary materials in ways that make
them seem special. The result is a high quality everyday facility
for small children. A transparent garage door opens up the main
play space and large screens cover the storage walls at the back.
These mechanisms are childproofed and the whole is oriented and
designed for the distracted and mobile nature of play. The
programme includes Plunket and a playgroup and the social benefits
of the conjunction were evident in exchanges between parents. The
colours of the architecture are cheerful and rich without being
childish in their combinations". Jury Citation