Brandon House banner
Project by
Location
Wellington Central, Wellington
Year of completion
2021
Building style
Contemporary

Awards and
recognition

2022
NZIA Wellington Architecture Award
Winner (Commercial Architecture)
2022
Best Design Awards
Gold Pin (Built Environment)
2022
NZIA New Zealand Architecture Award
Winner (Commercial Architecture)
2022
PCNZ – Property Industry Awards
Merit (RCP Commercial Office Property Award)
Studio Pacific Architecture
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 The ground floor of the building includes infrastructure for retail or hospitality. “There is a small area for retail on the corner, which is one structural bay and the curve, and then that continues on. All of the Featherston Street frontage is retail.”
This building was within the model of commercial property owner RJH’s portfolio, says Marc. “But it was probably one of their most significant upgrades. There was an addition of end-of-trip facilities, so there are showers and bike parking, the kinds of things you now get in an office building."
“The client wanted to move the lifts to be more central in the building. We were redoing the core anyway in terms of bathrooms and so on, so we did. And that was because RJH likes to split the floors among potentially a number of different tenants so lifts placed centrally usually makes good sense as it reduces the amount of internal corridor.”
 “RJH always has artwork in the lobby of its buildings, and music playing.” The stone is rosso levante marble.
The curved corner of the building is just as eye-catching inside as it is on the exterior. Tenants will do their own individual fitouts, says Marc.
“On the new timber top floors, we used some technologies that aren’t usually employed. The floors were raised with batten and cradle system – a plywood or particleboard flooring on battens which sit on rubber pads. That’s about acoustically isolating everything because timber doesn’t have the same mass as concrete. And it meant there was a bit of a cavity to run cabling as well.”
Finer detailing accentuates the building’s proportions. “There’s a 'cap' at the top of the building that’s a series of vertical fins. It was something our client quite liked and is very traditional on an office building,” says Marc.
This building was within the model of commercial property owner RJH’s portfolio, says Marc. “But it was probably one of their most significant upgrades. There was an addition of end-of-trip facilities, so there are showers and bike parking, the kinds of things you now get in an office building."
The 1960s building in Wellington has been extensively refurbished. “It was called The Leaders Building,” says Marc Woodbury of Studio Pacific Architecture. “I think it was originally built for an insurance company.” Now owned by RJH, its new name, Brandon House, refers to its location on the corner of Featherston and Brandon Streets.

Professionals used in
Brandon House

About the
Professional

Shaping Our Pacific Future – We are a cross-disciplinary architecture, interior, landscape and urban design practice shaping a more sustainable and people-centric built environment across the buildings, neighbourhoods, cities, and landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Studio Pacific was established in 1992 by friends and colleagues Evžen NovákNick Barratt-Boyes, and Stephen McDougall. After working in the UK and Europe, the three architects were drawn back home by a shared desire to form a collaborative and innovative practice in Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington.

They opened an architecture studio ‘of the Pacific’, applying their creativity to projects that engaged with, and elevated, context and culture. Over the years, this has grown into a compelling manifesto to shape our collective Pacific future, where people and the planet are at the heart of our built environment.

Today, we are a team of around 100 – including architects, urban designers, landscape architects, interior designers and business professionals. We bring diversity in thinking and design, and a democratic culture ensures clever ideas come from all corners of the practice, not necessarily from those who have been here the longest.

Open-minded, collaborative and creative, our practice has evolved into a leading and award-winning business, working on a wide range of exciting projects that seek to make Aotearoa New Zealand a better place.