A professional resource for the design curious
Warren and Mahoney’s NZi3 hovers at the edge of the University of Canterbury campus signalling high-tech attitude and function. Text by Andrea Stevens.
August 25th, 2010
NZi3, the national ICT Innovation Institute at the University of Canterbury Christchurch, is a technological hothouse.
It provides an environment for post-graduate and joint industry-academic research projects. It represents New Zealand’s first dedicated ICT research centre linking academia with industry.
Warren and Mahoney were tasked to create a building that would cater to a dynamically changing culture, have appropriate security and privacy, and a high degree of flexibility.
Above all the aesthetic of the building needed to signal a culture shift by appearing open and accessible. Its location on the public edge of campus, a fully glazed reception and function room and space station-style research floor, sets it apart from its mid-century academic cousins of the engineering school.
“NZi3 needed to respond to a quantum change that has occurred in engineering disciplines – that of advanced computer design, imaging and exploration,” says design director Andrew Barclay.
For the full text turn to page 160 of Indesign #42 on newsstands now.
Photography by Simon Devitt
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
Ad agencies have come a long way since the days depicted on Mad Men. Buzzing, energetic and always looking for the next big idea, it only follows that the workplace design for them should help spark inspiration. J. Walter Thompson’s (JWT) new Bangkok office by Orbit Design does exactly that.
