Punangairi Visitor Experience Centre

Punangairi houses a DOC visitor centre, retail area, café, meeting space and multimedia visitor experience in two linked buildings. The foundations are a combination of concrete foundation beams and timber piles attached to steel driven piles, forming a timber diaphragm subfloor that sits lighter on the landscape than traditional foundations. The structure is engineered timber strengthened in places with structural steel, while the striking curved frontage features a full height glass façade with beech insets. The green roof has over 3,500 trays holding locally grown plants, with an ACP soffit and fascia around the perimeter.

Designed to sit among the surrounding native forest, the structural timber curves and slopes to the building’s curves, with barely a square angle. This required a level of craftsmanship more akin to yacht building than standard carpentry. We took great care to protect the nīkau palms around the site, even building them into the deck in places.

A decision to build the timber structure under a massive wrapped scaffold paid dividends in the famously wet climate. We installed the canopy roof once the main structure was in place, then opened the roof and lowered the glass façade from above. Prefabricated flooring and roof cassettes used on the squarer second stage of the building, keeping the progress on track even after we found more asbestos than expected when we demolished the old visitor centre.

With the site a half-day drive from our Christchurch office in a relatively remote site on the West Coast, careful planning was key to delivering this project. We prioritised local subcontractors and suppliers where available. We also worked closely with surrounding businesses to minimise disruption, using raised walkways to ensure unimpeded access particularly while we were installing the new streetscape and highway crossing.

Images by Jason Mann Photography and Naylor Love.