92 | S&T Wellington ARCHITECTURE Integrated approach brings better results S&T Group is celebrating 70 years of experience shaping New Zealand’s built environment. T T Virginia Wright Nationally recognised architecture and engineering group Stephenson & Turner NZ, or S&T Group as it’s now known, is celebrating 70 years of experience shaping New Zealand’s built environment. S&T Group serves as an umbrella brand for three independent yet connected practices: S&T Auckland, S&T Wellington and Co- Studio in Christchurch. United under a shared identity, they bring together integrated design services grounded in technical expertise, collaborative practice and a shared commitment to quality. Each office respects the other’s independence, while collectively leveraging their scale to support each other collaboratively on nationwide projects. S&T Group’s heritage includes some of New Zealand’s most iconic projects, such as Shell House and the BNZ Tower in Wellington, and Auckland’s Starship Children’s Hospital and its international airport. Glen Wright joined the Wellington office as a graduate engineer nearly 35 years ago, and now shares its ownership with two other engineers and three architects with different areas of expertise. S&T Wellington brings together specialist skills in architecture, building services solutions, lighting design and building performance. They offer an integrated design approach that delivers efficient, future-focused solutions tailored to their clients’ needs. Their solutions are efficient, and so are the means by which they are arrived at, Glen says “Having architecture and engineering in the same room together gives a cross-pollination within the office. Instead of having the specialists in different companies meeting once a week, we have a lot of interaction. As soon as you think about something, you can get out of your seat and go and have a chat about it, so having the design performance team and the design services team involved means it’s truly collaborative. “Our clients get a better-considered building solution with a high level of integration and functionality and a high level of sustainability, and which performs well in terms of comfort and operating costs.” The relatively recent discipline of building performance raised the bar on design solutions based on the data they can put through software to compare how one insulation, or window placement, or cladding, for example, compares against another. Glen was responsible for setting up a specialist lighting team 15 years ago out of a desire to raise the bar on lighting. “Working with our architects gave us some insight into the importance of lighting in the appearance of a building, as well as for the comfort of the people in it. We wanted to provide more visual interest and integrate the lighting more cohesively into the fabric of the building,” he says. S&T Wellington went on to work in environmentally conscious lighting, and has been involved in establishing some of New Zealand’s Dark Sky Reserves. They have nearly finished relighting the Wellington waterfront, and last year were involved in the award-winning Maidstone Sports Hub delivered by the architectural and engineering S&T Wellington team. It’s typical of the community focus that runs through all their work to create beautiful places to live, work, and play. Sir Arthur Stephenson, founding and distinguished Australian architect, was a proponent of leveraging the synergies between the different disciplines involved in quality building design well before he established the first Stephenson & Turner office in New Zealand to build the Dunedin Hospital, and that philosophy remains a central driver of the S&T Group today. Fully New Zealand owned and operated, and still of a size that allows them to be nimble and responsive to their clients’ needs, they are always ready to move into new areas and become expert at delivering cost-effective solutions whenever the opportunities arise. RoofLogicis pleased to have provided the Roof and Wall Systems for the Maidstone Sports Hub and congratulate all involved in this project
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDc2Mzg=