The apartment building at 118 Bealey Avenue represented an opportunity to be part of the Christchurch rebuild and to help reinforce this important and historically significant Avenue. The nature of this deep and relatively narrow site along with commercial requirements were key drivers for the design of the building footprint and offers a balance of studio, one, two and three bedroom apartments over three levels.
Thoughtful consideration of the site context has influenced the building form to create a strong roof line reinforcing the street ‘edge’. East and West elevations are broken down into a human scale with trees and plantings located to reduce the visual impact to neighbouring properties. The East and West façades offer a modulated and ‘rhythmic’ response where recessed balconies help modulate solid to void and the North and West façades become the ‘book-ends’to the built form.
Integrated energy efficiency was a key design objective and a design focus on structural resilience and low damage finishes were fundamental to the design and material selection.

Project authored whilst at WSP Architecture