Toru Apartments, Queenstown

Toru East Apartments is the first stage of a three-building housing development located in Frankton. The seven-storey building consists of 78 one, two and three-bedroom apartments, two commercial tenancies, car parking and common areas.

A traditional concrete and steel foundation on the ground level gives way to an innovative Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) timber structure supported by two concrete cores on the remaining six levels. Each core houses a lift and stairwell and consists of complex pre-cast concrete panels which use the PRESSS low damage system to provide superior seismic performance.

The structure between the cores is prefabricated LVL framing and plywood floor cassettes supporting a reinforced concrete topping slab. The framing doubled as falsework for the floor being poured above, eliminating the need for temporary propping and allowing fit-out works to commence immediately on the floor below.

Powder coated aluminium vertical ship-lap boards over a fibre cement sheet rigid air barrier coupled with a high-end residential aluminium window suite complete the building envelope. Exterior works included formation of car park areas, landscaping and an 80 metre long retaining wall which returns into a pre-cast concrete stair linking the nearby shopping centre to the apartment site.

Extensive use of prefabricated elements combined with our active supervision of quality control from manufacturing to installation allowed the three key project benchmarks of quality, sustainability and efficiency to be realised on the Toru East Apartments build. We were pleased to hand the project over to the client six weeks ahead of programme, adding much needed extra capacity to the Queenstown housing market.