104 | Repeat clients expand portfolio The practice has a broad range of projects, including commercial and residential, hotels and tourism. ARCHITECTURE APG Architects T T Virginia Wright “The walls are all glass clad, painted on the back face, with a very cleanable surface for keeping the space sterile that doesn’t degrade over time.” When APG Architects was established in 2003, Ces Scott was one of the three original directors. Based in Hamilton, the company’s reach now extends throughout New Zealand to Fiji and around the world, although their focus remains the Waikato region. The practice has a broad range of projects, including commercial and residential, hotels and tourism. The architects work all over the country with the Fire Service and St John, and with Maori tertiary education provider Te Wananga o Aotearoa, while for the Brethren’s One School, they design concepts worldwide. “It began as the design and build of a school here in New Zealand, and now they’re upgrading their schools to align with modern pedagogy, including using the latest technology to allow their schools all over the world to communicate and collaborate,” explains Ces. Working with repeat clients is a typical scenario for APG Architects, and has been replicated in other areas, including medicine, with a history of builds for public and private hospitals, laboratories of all sorts, and recently the Hills Agricultural Laboratory, which at 7500sqm is the biggest in the Southern hemisphere. It was the work they did as part of the development of the Anglesea Medical Precinct in Hamilton that brought them into contact with Surgeons on Clarence. Their experience designing the endoscopy clinic for the private Anglesea Hospital made APG Architects an obvious choice for the surgeons, who were planning their own endoscopy clinic on a small site next to the cottage where they consult with patients.. The site was steep and constrained, but because it was zoned for medical use they were able to build to the boundaries. The Australia and New Zealand Health Guidelines offered Ces and project architect Sandra Torres and their team a useful tool for understanding all the equipment needed in the various suites, and how to lay it out for best practice, while the surgeons provided a detailed brief for the two theatres and eightbed recovery ward – all with complex clinical demands in mind. “In the theatres, the lights and computers that operate the cameras for the investigative procedures are all suspended from the ceiling on pendants. “The walls are all glass clad, painted on the back face, with a very cleanable surface for keeping the space sterile that doesn’t degrade over time,” explains Ces. The heightened requirements for patient safety in the event of a fire meant they had to allow for two means of escape – one internal through the building, and a second via an external walkway running the length of the building from the lobby of the operating theatre to the street front to enable people to safely regain ground level. APG Architects worked closely with geotech and structural engineers to achieve the structural integrity and earthquake resilience needed in an Importance Level 3 building, and even more closely on the way through the build with Construct Ltd, the successful tenderer. “We knew from having partnered with them before that they would produce a very good-quality build and would manage the highly detailed electrical and medical gas requirements, sprinklers, air-conditioning and cooling and ventilation that come with the territory,” says Ces. The resulting building not only does everything it’s meant to do medically, but has already won two awards with care for patient wellbeing a highlight of both. The Commercial and Office category Colour Maestro Award from Resene recognises their ‘beautifully balanced palette that avoids the common obstacle of feeling too clinical’. That same ‘calm, carefully considered environment supporting patient welfare’, combined with its architectural integrity won gold in the Commercial category of the 2025 Waikato and Bay of Plenty New Zealand Institute of Architecture (NZIA) Awards. 07 848 1101 | constructltd.co.nz | info@constructltd.co.nz Proud to have been the main contractor delivering Endoscopy on Clarence Leaders in Commercial & Residential Construction
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