A new commercial building acknowledges and celebrating the original shoreline of Auckland, a key link between the upper city and the waterfront. FORMiS designed the Te Aukati buildings to accommodate several commercial tenancies, connecting them through a broad internal promenade.

The product needed to be secure and long-lasting, and also look like real timber. UltraBatten, which is an extruded aluminium profile, is attached with concealed fixings, it can be anodised or powder-coated into almost infinite colours.

“In this case it was powder coated and it has a sublimated woodgrain finish from Metwood so it looks a lot like wood.”

The sublimated pattern on the aluminium is varied, so that it doesn’t appear to have repeating patterns, making it far more realistic than some other products.

Because UltraBatten is aluminium it’s less prone to degradation over the long term and is also in line with the sustainability goals of the project.