By Sheppard & Rout Architects
The FMG Office Building sits adjacent to the Memorial Avenue Gateway bridge, at the entrance to Christchurch International Airport campus. The site for the building forms a prominent corner of the Agri-Export office precinct, which includes the ANZCO and PGG Buildings. The FMG building forms the final stage of the office precinct master plan, which includes the three building developments, landscaping, and site facilities. Included as part of the design scope is a central ‘pocket park’ space which incorporates shared bike parking facilities and communal shelter structures.
The client brief was for a building, which has a strong relationship to its site context as an important point of entry to the Airport. The extruded building form is derived from its relationship to the adjacent motorway and Memorial Ave corridor. The folded façade and angled sunshade screen provide a sense of movement and an effect of parallax as you transition from the off-ramp to slower pace of the airport precinct. The ground floor is set back to allow the form to hover above the ground plane and the undulating landscape forms below. The building is part of a sequence of events and forms that relate to each other, evoke dynamism and movement, to enhance the experience of arrival.
We aim to produce humanist architecture comprised of stimulating and inspirational spaces and places.
We are a design-based practice that believes in providing tailor-made solutions to an individual client's needs. The fundamental objective of the practice is to develop architecture that is appropriate to its specific site, wider context and intended use while being robust, flexible and environmentally-aware.
These variables are used along with the appropriate structural considerations to develop buildings with well-suited form and style, instead of approaching the design from a stylistic standpoint.
The practice was established in 1982 in Christchurch by David Sheppard and Jonty Rout. In its 40 years the practice has carried out a wide range of projects covering many types and in numerous geographic locations. The founding partners brought to the practice extensive design and construction experience gained while working with other offices in both New Zealand and overseas. Tim Dagg joined Sheppard & Rout in 1986 and Jasper van der Lingen in 1993 and they both joined David Sheppard as Directors in 2006.
With David Sheppard now retired and Jonty very sadly passed away the practice is led by Directors Jasper van der Lingen and Tim Dagg and three Associate Directors; Matt Gutsell, Jonathan Kennedy and Steven Orr.