“It’s tricky when you’re refurbishing old buildings because you don’t want to make it too perfect.”

DAVE BENSLEY The Maritime Building has always been a great building, but there were a few quirky elements that we had the opportunity to tidy up. The roof had leaks and we had hatches everywhere in the top-floor ceiling so we could silicone up the leaky holes. It wasn’t the best way to operate. Putting on a new roof also provided an opportunity for us to insulate it properly. The parapet was an old ‘70s Mansard roof made from corrugated iron, which was architecturally not that great and needed a change to tie in with the rest of the building. The lift and stairs hadn’t been upgraded in a long time and there were some layout changes that needed to happen for the way that we work and bring better efficiencies. The reason for the timing was that we didn’t have any other big projects running in the precinct and we had some other space available, so it was a great opportunity for the Cooper and Company team to vacate the building and go ‘camping’ so we could fix the roof and leaks at our HQ.

DAVE BENSLEY We looked at that quite long and hard as there’s a cost-benefit analysis that you want to do on it versus the idea that adding solar is just the right thing to do. A lot of time, effort, energy, money and material resources go into putting solar panels up. So, you have to ask, “Would we be doing all this just to feel good about ourselves?” We had numerous schemes done and actually, the answer turned out to be, “Yes.” There’s a massive building right next to Maritime House that blocks all the afternoon sun. We only really get sun in the morning, so the modelling just didn’t stack up. The roof is also quite small and you really need a large roof space to make solar work. We spent a bit of money up front, but it turned out that this particular building wasn’t suited for it.

DAVE The insulation that they’d previously put in was very light. You wouldn’t even put that insulation in a house these days. The new insulation is very thick and now satisfies the latest code requirements, so we would expect that the heating and cooling usage for the building should diminish because it will be a more stable environment inside. We won’t have to heat it up a lot in winter and conversely, in summer, it won’t get too hot so that you don’t have to cool it down so much. There’s a lot of concrete in that building, but there’s also a lot of glass, and it’s single pane glass. So that’s the tension. You do lose warmth through there, so you’re never going to get it perfect. Overall, there will be a reduction in the power usage.

DAVE BENSLEY We had the air monitoring installed prior to the refurbishment so we’ve got some data from then. And now that we’ve got the building fully done, fully insulated and finished, we’ll have new data to compare it against. There’s a tension with these heritage buildings in that it’s difficult to make them airtight so that the inside atmosphere can be fully controlled. Being airtight has got its pluses, but it’s also got its minuses. The minuses are, for example, not being able to just open up a window and feel the fresh sea breeze blow in. On the plus side though, we don’t want that all the time because Quay Street can be pretty busy sometimes with its traffic externality. So, it’s a compromise when we’re doing up these old buildings, and we have to try and make up those gaps as best we can.

DAVE BENSLEY I’m quite big on making sure everyone comes along for the ride and all the stakeholders involved have a say in what they want. Because there’s no point getting to the end and someone going, “Well, what about this?” Or, “Wish you’d done that.” One of the big stakeholders was our facilities management (FM) team. The reality is that the development team manages the build at the front end, but we hand the keys over to the facilities team at the end. So, if the FM team hasn’t been involved with the design of the inner mechanical and electrical and hydraulics through the build process, that’s a missed opportunity. When you have got the walls and the roof open, they can see where all the pipes and cables etc are. I oversaw it all, but I made sure I gave good autonomy to the facilities team to run those parts of the project to get the best outcome for us. We ensured the FM team was across all these issues so it made for a collaborative approach to the project.

Another group I want to give credit to is the team at Alma, the restaurant on the ground floor of the building. They had to work with us while we did up the building. We planned things on the redevelopment to accommodate them as best we could and I take my hat off to Jo and Tash who had to manage that refurbishment situation with us.

DAVE BENSLEY We re-plastered and painted, all of the plastered walls, all of the dado lines throughout and installed new heritage-style marmoleum flooring, which was nice. It’s tricky when you’re refurbishing old buildings because you don’t want to make it too perfect. That’s actually not what this is about. It’s an old building that needs to show its character, like a distinguished person with lines on their face and that’s a good thing. So it’s knowing what to tidy up and refresh and knowing what to leave and express.

DAVE BENSLEY Wood panelling is a big thing that we have throughout the building, so really it was about going, “How can we take a timber panel but do something a little bit special?” The first sketches were quite heartening of a wonderful little timber jewel. And so I was thinking, “What we’re going to need is a craftsman.” I reached out to a few different people that I knew. I knew one gentleman, Henry Lin, who absolutely loves wood and timber and quite liked the challenge of the project. He texted me saying, “I think I can save you a bit of money by automating it.” Which meant he was wanting to do it on an auto lathe. But what we wanted was him to do it with a chisel: chiseling these scallops out of one piece of timber is craftsmanship. So, we asked him to carry on with the chisel and he said, “I’ll come back to you when my wrist gets sore!” He then burst out laughing. 

It was quite wonderful when he completed it all by hand. The beauty is when you look closely, there are some mistakes, and you know what? That’s actually good, we didn’t want it perfect, that’s the art form of it. Then the bluestone floor puts a nice solid foundation on the lift that flows through from the lobby and from outside. There is a Britomart language that we like to use, and this was an expression of that.

DAVE BENSLEY Yes there was. We actually used the same building contractor that we used for the Kiwi Building, which was a Green Star project and a lot of those practices we took straight over to our Maritime project. Waste separation, taking it to the right refuse disposal centres, recycling where we could, sourcing eco products where appropriate, the types of paint that we used to give us a good sustainable project while under refurbishment as well as a long term sustainable building for the works we had done.

DAVE BENSLEY Yes, absolutely, with both Heritage New Zealand and the heritage department from Auckland Council. We always let them know when we are refurbishing, and we really engage with them very early on in the concept stage before it even goes to consent, they have seen what we are planning, the ideas, the sketchbooks. We then get an early steer on whether we are on the right path and we can walk that early journey together to get the best outcome.

DAVE BENSLEY That’s right, and there was a lot of discussion about that. On the whole, Heritage New Zealand like to work from a purist point of view, what things were like at the very beginning. However sometimes you can propose a different approach and to give them credit they do understand that the commercial realities need to be taken into account and that forms part of our discussions.

The Australis Nathan Building is a perfect example. The front door addresses of those buildings used to be on Customs Street 100-plus years ago because that was where all the custom was. That’s not the case anymore. Now it’s all on the north side, the Galway Street side, the sunny side of the building and they allowed us to make design changes to facilitate this – respect to them.

So it was the same sort of thing with the Maritime Building. Quay Street is busy but how many people walk down Quay Street and look up with a bent neck to see the name of the building? A few, but not many. How many people sit in Takutai Square and look up at Maritime? That would be a lot. Things have changed, and they recognised that. So we pitched moving the building name and they agreed with it. That planning side is really important; giving time for people to mull through ideas.

DAVE BENSLEY I really liked the bespoke plaster render on the parapet and its final form with its curved edges and flashings. When you look back at it from Takutai Square, it’s got this tonality in the sunlight which is really hard to achieve. The plasterers did such an amazing job. I also really enjoyed the project and build team. There were so many different trades who all turned up and created a really good vibe as everyone bought into the vision of the place. And I was also pretty happy to have fixed the leak above my desk after 17 or 18 years; 

I don’t have to worry about a bucket on my windowsill anymore! But my highlight is the lift. The little brass curves that surround the handrail and how the pin-size downlights light up the scallops in the timber walnut panelling is quite magic. It’s a small little piece of joinery really, but quite lovely. It was a great collective team effort.