The Station Street project is a very tightly constrained site on the fringe of Napier city. The client wanted to build a four-storey apartment consisting of one or two-bedroom units for owner occupiers and short stay accommodation.

There were several challenges facing the site which we used to drive the design. These included, the limited site area, two hard adjoining boundaries, sunlight access, parking requirements, vehicle circulation and council imposed volumetric constraints. In addition to this there were key urban design criteria that we had to meet around; passes surveillance, modulation and facade articulation and sustainable integration. By driving the architecture through the above constraints, we developed a design with high levels of amenity value for the building occupants, this was achieved with good access to sunlight, individual outdoor spaces and efficient spatial planning - The internal spatial arrangement was coordinated with the structural layout to ensure a column free floor plate. This required coordination with the ground floor car park to ensure vehicle circulation would comply with the New Zealand Standard.