Project Description
Client:
Auckland City Council (now Auckland Council)
Project Value:
$121 million
The Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tāmaki, is New Zealand’s oldest established and largest public art gallery. Originally opened in February 1888, the gallery has increasingly become a focal point of Auckland’s rich and diverse cultural fabric.
However, prior to the current development The Gallery could only show 3-4 percent of its collection at any one time, and was often unable to accept large exhibitions due to constraints in the scale and flexibility of its space.
Through a detailed design process drawing on international standards the redevelopment has been able to retain the heritage fabric of the original buildings yet incorporate contemporary building elements. The combination will successfully meet the challenging vision for the redevelopment to create an iconic contemporary building appropriate to house the country’s finest art collections.
Construction of the 10,000m² extension and refurbishment of the 4,000m² heritage gallery space commenced in 2008 and and was completed in September 2011. In excess of 50% more exhibition space has been created. All display areas now meet international gallery standards, requiring close controlled temperature and humidity levels throughout. The existing heritage buildings have been refurbished, in places using historic techniques, and seismically upgraded to meet current codes and standards.
In 2004 we had to draw on our international experience to benchmark the gallery proposals in order to set a workable budget which has then been constantly monitored and updated as the design has progressed.
The project was awarded 2013 World Building of the Year at the prestigious World Architecture Festival in Singapore.
