| 65 T T Hugh de Lacy Glenorchy project wins multiple awards The Great Glenorchy Alpine Base Camp. Award winning dinning area fit out including simple solid block seating by Mike Kingan Builders. Mike Kingan Builders BUILDING KITCHENS | DOORS | WINDOWS | VANITIES | LAUNDRY | STAIRS OTAGO SOUTHLAND CUSTOM JOINERY SPECIALISTS Pleased to be associated with Mike Kingan Builders LOOKING FOR QUALIFIED STAFF any interested parties please email admin@leadingedgejoinery.co.nz ALL YOUR HEATING & REFRIGERATION NEEDS COVERED Contact us today for your FREE quote: info@wakatipuhr.com | 027 881 0050 We offer excellent, professional installation, maintenance and breakdown servicing on heat pumps, refrigeration, ventilation and hydronic systems for domestic, commercial and industrial units. We service Queenstown, Arrowtown, Gibbston, Glenorchy, Kingston, Wanaka and Cromwell He builds upmarket homes – and lots else – in the tourist hub of Queenstown and throughout Otago, but Mike Kingan’s favourite place to build is in his tiny hometown of Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu. There his company, Mike Kingan Builders, has been involved in a new accommodation and adventure initiative called the Great Glenorchy Alpine Base Camp. The project has already won two RED Awards, one for craftsmanship and the other a services category outright winner, and is also short-listed for the Southern Architectural Awards. The RED Awards are aimed at promoting excellence in retail design, and to recognise the contribution of designers, builders and suppliers to the retail and service industries. The Great Glenorchy Alpine Base Camp initiative was driven by local entrepreneurs Doug and Liz Rikard-Bell, and it opened recently featuring a cluster of low-impact family cabins with bunk beds, designed to reflect the outdoor adventurism of its clients and the New Zealand mountain hut vernacular. The camp provides accommodation infrastructure for trampers and back-country adventurers to enjoy the 2.6 million hectares of UNESCO Heritage-protected wilderness on its doorstep. The interior design which Mike delivered was conceptualised by Jessica Walker of the firm Bureaux from a master plan devised by Richard Naish, director of the Auckland architectural firm RTA. Some of the huts are of corrugated iron and others of timber, but all share the sense and practicality of the traditional mountaineers’ hut that typifies the Southern Alps, and the project puts the needs of the alpine adventurer foremost. Mike Kingan says he’s got huge satisfaction from his company’s work on the base camp, in no small part because it is a specifically local initiative. “I’ve had a specially good relationship with Doug Rikard-Bell, the project lead and a Glenorchy local.” Nor is the base camp the only project that Rikard-Bell has been driving: in 2020 he lodged an application with the Queensland Lakes District Council to build a luxury 55room lakefront hotel to be called the Grand Mount Earnslaw Hotel. The proposed site is that of the former Mount Earnslaw Hotel which burned down in 1959, and the design of the new building reflects that of the old. The development was initially opposed by the Otago Regional Council (ORC), triggering an appeal from which the council withdrew. It has since been consented. Meanwhile Mike Hingan Builders continues with a staff of two to build about one house a year – but that’s only one aspect of the company’s services. Mike, who completed his building apprenticeship and built his first house by the age of 20, launched his company in Wanaka in 2006, and it has since amassed a large portfolio of high-end houses. A second string to his bow is restoration, of which the Paradise Homestead at the head of the lake has been a particularly satisfying job. Built in 1883, the homestead was Category One heritage-listed, but in 2014 it suffered major fire damage. Mike, one of only a handful of builders certified to work on Category One buildings, got the job of restoring it literally from the ground up, beginning with the piling. Today the former retirement home of William Mason, New Zealand’s first Government Architect, is one of the architectural and historical gems of the southern lakes district. And, with Mike, it doesn’t end there: his company caters to the emerging tiny buildings market, and he even builds bespoke furniture and joinery for his customers and friends in his Glenorchy workshop. “We create homes that tell a story; we create furniture that become family heirlooms; we restore buildings; we build new sustainable houses, and we dream up crazy ideas,” Mike says. The long-awaited slowdown in the building industry after a frantic period during the Covid epidemic, when materials costs rocketed and labour was hard to find, has yet to make itself apparent in his specialist markets. “It’s still good but it’s not particularly optimistic, and we’re still in a situation where we’ve got work ahead of us for about a year. Mike Kingan in his Glenorchy workshop.
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