| 89 ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN RM Designs Virginia Wright Team ethic drives design success The Murney Main Building in Ashburton. RM Designs won gold in the commercial sub-section of the New Zealand Commercial Projects Award 2022, as well as the Value Award for $3-10m projects. Co-founded by Bernie O’Fagan back in 1998, Christchurch based RM Designs has a team of eight architectural designers including six mums designing buildings all over the country. From their roots in hospitality they moved into tourism, mixed-use buildings and multi-unit residential. It’s a collaborative environment at RM Designs with an underlying philosophy of ‘No one of us is as smart as all of us’. From the firm’s earliest days they believed in getting everyone around the table early in the design process. “We might have just sketched a few things when we were at concept stage but we’d already have a fire engineer, a structural engineer, a builder and whoever else and we’d say ‘this is the budget we’ve got to spend’, and they’d say ‘well you better stop now, you can’t afford that’ which saved everyone a lot of time and money,” says Bernie. Early contractor engagement plays a big part in the ‘Design for Manufacture and onsite Assembly’ (DfMA), builds RM Designs are often involved with. These are mostly mass timber. Relatively lightweight (when compared with steel and concrete), prefabricated components are brought to the site ready for quick and efficient assembly, but early collaboration is essential to avoid potential errors and pitfalls which would negate the savings in material requirements, cost, and the time it takes to get from the start of sitework to completed building. In 2013 RM Designs designed Bealey Lodge, a two-level Christchurch backpackers’ accommodation, using CLT (Cross Laminated Timber). “It was only 2000sqm, but at the time it was New Zealand’s largest mass timber building and won all sorts of innovation awards for our partners and us,” says Bernie. The build was post-earthquake and the ground conditions were terrible, he remembers, but whereas the budget to get the building out of the ground using steel and concrete would have eaten up 20% of the whole, using CLT and an engineered timber system it was more like 9%, “so it sort of saved the job budget wise. We weren’t really thinking sustainability in those days, it was more of a bonus.” says Bernie. Although CLT for that build came about by pure chance, it laid the foundations for RM Designs to form lasting relationships with engineers ENGco and suppliers XLam. They have since designed more than 30 projects using CLT or other mass timber materials such as GluLam, Parallel Laminated Timber, their sustainability being just one more thing in their favour. The new Artificial Limb Centre for Burwood Hospital is a good example. Three key elements of the brief were that the build had to be quiet, it had to be rapid once it started, and it had to have a sustainability factor. “So we knew straightaway it had to be a mass timber building, built off-site and assembled on-site,” says Bernie. They’re not purists though and RM Designs will as readily design a multi-level building in concrete as in mass timber, or a combination of the two, with steel or other materials as required in whichever combination most effectively meets their client’s brief and site requirements. A notable example of this is the Murney Main Building in Ashburton that recently won RM Designs gold in the commercial sub-section of the New Zealand Commercial Projects Award 2022, as well as the Value Award for $3-10m projects. A key feature of the brief was to use local wherever possible. “It’s essentially a copper and concrete building,” says Bernie. “Bradfords manufacture concrete panels locally and the Murneys had their hearts set on local aggregates from the riverbed there to give us the colouration they wanted, so the job started from there.” Built for manufacturing pioneers the Murney Family the building was intended from the beginning to provide a gateway to Ashburton’s CBD, a focus for its revitalisation. It combines contemporary architecture with heritage materials of copper and timber detailing, with concrete treated to resemble bluestone and a backlit mural representing native birds on the mid-Canterbury plains and the family insignia. The judges commented that the building will provide a long-lasting legacy of collaboration and will become an exemplar for future development in the town. For RM Designs the building is an outstanding example of what can be achieved through early engagement harnessing the best that every member of the team has to offer. “It was incredibly rewarding to work closely with the clients and with Bradford Builders on the buildability of the design in order to achieve something the Murneys and their community will enjoy for generations to come,” says Bernie. The Murney Main Building provides a gateway to Ashburton’s CBD and a focus for its revitalisation. Phone: 03 983 5500 waterfordpress.co.nz Your Business, Your Industry, Your News. DO OUR READERS KNOW YOU EXIST?
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