The newly renovated St Peters Town Hall Complex has tried to integrate old design with new – by keeping them separate.
Smoothly blending new steel, glass and concrete structures into an old stone building is a difficult act. But this re-development manages to do just that, allowing the new interior renovation to bathe in the light streaming through the heritage-listed brick windows.
Co-director of the re-development Michael Pilkington, whose firm Phillips/Pilkington Architects designed the project with Flightpath Architects, said it was a challenge to keep the design respectful to the “architecturally-rich site”.
In deference to the heritage of the buildings, some of which date back to the 1880s, the architects tried to keep the contact between the old work and the new to a minimum.
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“We were very careful to keep our new work separate, as much as we could, from the existing heritage work,” Pilkington said. “For instance, the entrances we’ve put in, we’ve made sure they don’t touch the existing heritage work much at all.
“We’ve made little glazed links that join the new entrances to the old part of the hall, and we’ve been very careful to make sure they line up with existing windows where we’ve made new cuts through walls.”
Pilkington said the materials used in the new structures also helped to keep history at a respectful distance
“A lot of our materials are steel, glass, concrete, plywood; very different to the palette that is there historically, which is stone, red-brick work, timber windows and timber floors.”
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To make the most of the space offered by the high ceilings in the old Town Hall, Phillips/Pilkington and Flightpath Architects have constructed a mezzanine which sits level with the large, domed windows that run the length of the hall and flood it with light.
“The space is just lovely to be in,” said Pilkington.
“We didn’t push the mezzanine up against the big windows, out of respect for the space inside.”
The distance between the mezzanine and the large hall windows accentuates the imposing height of the existing ceiling.
“As you move from the side spaces where the big windows are, you have this little lower section over the circulation counter and you have this big whoosh as you go up nearer to the windows; it goes up very high, using the double height space.”
The re-development of the three heritage-listed buildings into a community hub incorporates a new library, a Cultural Heritage Centre, new offices for the Eastern Health Authority and a new studio for community radio station Three D.
Pilkington said while “it’s a challenge to integrate new uses into heritage structures”, he enjoys working on community projects
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