It is with great pleasure that The DESIGNFIRE is proud to announce that on Friday night we received a Silver Award in the Retail Project category at the New Zealand Commercial Project Awards 2021!

This award was received for our designs on Wang Food Market on the Northshore. It was a great honour to receive this award for our team.

 

About the Awards

The award is held annually in Auckland Central. It aims to celebrate projects of collaboration and innovation across the building industry. The awards recognise the contribution of the entirety of the project team, making sure there is an all-around appreciation for those who brought amazing projects to life. Those who are among the recognitions include, but are in no way limited to Contractors, Architects, Building Owners, Engineers, Quantity Surveyors etc.

There are 9 various types of awards;

Bronze Award: Awarded to entries that achieve 75% of the available points.

Silver Award: Awarded to entries that achieve 82.5% of the points available.

Gold Award: Awarded to entries that achieve 90% of the points available.

National Category Award: Awarded to the highest points scoring entrant in each category provided they have received a Gold Award.

Supreme Award: Awarded the Category Winner with the highest points.

Platinum Award: Awarded to an Entrant who has won five or more national titles. Platinum is awarded to an organisation only once and is the highest accolade that can be achieved in the New Zealand Commercial Project Awards.

Special Award: Awarded at the Judges’ discretion to an outstanding project or element of a project that they feel is worthy of recognition.

Sustainability Award: Awarded at the Judge’s discretion for a project design with exceptional environmental features.

Innovation Award: Awarded at the Judge’s discretion for a project that has taken an innovative approach. Innovation could be in the field of process, design, construction, materials, or technology.

 

About the Build

This build was an exciting one for us here at The DESIGNFIRE as it was close to the office! We were able to work alongside the team at Statesman Projects who constructed the project.

The Wang Supermarket has open, high ceilings with ample cross ventilation, providing an energy-efficient structure. Louvres, low-level glazing with a cover over provides good solar protection to reduce energy bill. The building form has been considered in order to minimize cut and wastes for cladding and materials yet varied elevation design elements makes the building interesting and engaged to look and also reflect the branding. Potential maintenance issues have been considered when selecting material – feature Patten concrete and steel claddings etc. that are mostly locally sourced.

The building has a simple form retail building that reflects the modern, premium and fresh Asian grocery company image of Wang. The resulting design provided a simple architectural form with a modern, elegant aesthetics outlook and high ceiling level shopping environment, like as would be offered in a bigger shopping centre such as Countdown. But it is a unique try for such boutique Asian product retailers like Wang Trading.

Due to the slope of the site, and the fact the façade presence to the street is essential, and to create minimum disruption the ground, the building sits on the suspended concrete floor and underneath is utilized as storage space, thereby optimizing the cut and fill with the site to minimize the waste.  A careful design and consultant coordination were required for the floors and site work to ensure the floor supports necessary loading such as racking. The design team and the contractor were in constant communication to ensure the construction process goes smoothly.

We did have some challenges, with the change of specifications for a couple of products. The feature façade was initially designed as timber cladding but later changed to steel cladding type for durability, easy maintenance.

The DESIGNFIRE was the Passive Fire Design expert, as well as a Registered Architect. The proposed mezzanine floor required 30 minutes fire rating underneath with all the supporting walls fire rated. Given its timber construction, passive fire design was a challenge as what was constructed on-site did not precisely match the design. The DESIGNFIRE handled and optimized passive fire design works on the site that was also meeting the aesthetic requirement. There was a bit of a time challenge submitting this update to be approved by the council during construction.

However, overall, we had superb communication throughout the process. This building project met the budget and time frame in the end.

You can read more about the building here on our website or watch a video here.

If you want to know more about the award on this project, please see here.

If you would like to get in touch about creating an award-winning project, then please email [email protected].