82 | ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN Piper Architects: Naylor Love WoodUp Construction Residential: Reliable Fully licensed and committed to meeting deadlines and budgets. Proactive We identify and resolve issues early to save you time and money. Professional & Transparent Client satisfaction is our top priority; we listen closely and strive to exceed expectations. Timber framing Steel studs Trims Cladding Decking Renovations Commercial: Timber framing Steel framing Suspended ceilings Trims Interior fitouts Retail fitouts GET IN TOUCH: 022 568 0204 | anton@woodupconstruction.co.nz Proudly Supporting Piper Architects AT L ASIAN TILERS LIMITED Terracota • Ceramic • Marble • Granite • Waterproofing • Tiling Supply COMMERCIAL SPECIALISTS IN 72A Kerwyn Ave, East Tamaki, Auckland 2013 09 279 4483 021 681 080 tom@asiantilers.co.nz Understanding the power of design Piper Architects transformed the former Birkenhead Post Office building into a successful contemporary wellness centre. Photo: Sam Harnett T T Virginia Wright “With a place like the Mokoia Wellness Centre it needs to feel calm and restorative and tick all these boxes in terms of how the autonomic nervous system responds to the space.” Rachael Piper, who has been in the industry for 10 years, set up her own firm Piper Architects two years ago after working for herself while she had a family. She was recently a top finalist in the prestigious Emerging Designer category of this year’s Interior of the Year Awards in which one of her projects, the Mokoia Wellness Centre, was a finalist in the Health & Wellness category. The firm does a variety of different work and is client led rather than driven by a particular style. Rachael’s favourite type of work involves design-led projects regardless of the typology of the building: home, café or wellness centre — it’s about working together with the client to transform a space into something different and more interesting than it was before. “Regardless of how you might describe the philosophy behind what you’re doing, at the end of the day somebody responds to the space immediately, before they’ve even thought consciously about where they’re standing, so the thing that we focus on is how does the client want the project to feel,” she says. “With a place like the Mokoia Wellness Centre it needs to feel calm and restorative and tick all these boxes in terms of how the autonomic nervous system responds to the space. The science is catching up with what we know intuitively — that if you go into a space that’s chaotic we all feel that, if it’s calm, we feel that too.” With a design that drew on the client’s love of old European architecture, the architectural language of ancient Turkish and Roman bath houses, and the science of how our bodies respond to space in an almost involuntary way, Piper Architects transformed the former Birkenhead Post Office building into a successful contemporary wellness centre. The design needed to bring cohesion to a space housing a range of businesses from pilates to contrast therapy. While under the broader ‘wellness’ banner each space has its own identity and its own requirements but one thing they have in common is a sense of ritual. With the different architectural references in mind Piper Architecture worked on how to bring that feeling of ancient ritual and calm into the space and make it a transformative experience for everyone coming into it. The exterior of the building changed very little, while the interior space lent itself to some of the client’s key requirements. “We had the condition that all of those consultation rooms had to have natural light in them and the building layout allowed us to place them all around the perimeter of the plan where all the original windows were located,” explains Rachael. That left a long corridor with little natural light as the communal area which they transformed with the ancient Roman and Turkish bathhouse approach front of mind. “We animated the space with arches and used the corridor to provide a sense of ceremony and a transition from the busy vibrant Birkenhead shopping hub into your massage or contrast therapy. “It’s an invitation to take a deep breath and relax into the change of energy as the light drops down. The ancient Romans created a sensory transitional sequence and used temperature and light to help alter the body’s state.” It was a complex project ably managed by Naylor Love and involving detailed carpentry and tilework which expertly achieved the quality finish expected on each of the rooms with their exacting individual requirements. From Rachael’s point of view, it was a smooth journey to a highly successful outcome. The concept drawing on those ancient traditions and the masterful use of light and shade, along with a massive monolithic stone reception desk and textured plaster arches, are some of the elements that mean Piper Architects and the Mokoia Wellness Centre are in the running for one of the Pins to be given out at the “Best Night” gala dinner to be held by the Designers Institute of New Zealand in October.
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