Smales Farm B:Hive

The B:Hive, located on Auckland’s North Shore, is the biggest, purpose built, co-working space in the Southern Hemisphere.

Location

Auckland, New Zealand

Client

Northcote RD1 Holdings Limited

Project Value

$90m

Project Status

Complete: 2015-2018

It covers 11,000m2 over five floors and can cater to small and mid-size businesses; with up to 1-250 employees. WSP was approached in 2015 by Smales Farm to undertake a scope of services ranging from hydraulics, lighting, acoustic, electrics and ICT for the building. The client envisioned a mixture of open, agile spaces where tenants can feel empowered to collaborate freely.

WSP worked closely with the lead designers, BVN and Jasmax to ensure that function was not lost in form. WSP Senior Electrical Engineer and Project Manager, Raitis Rimovich experienced the ever-changing face of B:Hive; from its open-plan design to its finished partitioned layout. Coexisting with its modern design, is the state-of-the art facilities, technologies and amenities that the B:Hive delivers - this includes:

A mixed mode ventilation system that draws air that is six times fresher than required by the NZ building code
An installed solar hot water panels with water circulation pump
Acoustic engineering to ensure a flexible yet acoustically separable floor plate for the changing needs of the users
Green space; with the idea to create a non-urban environment via greenery and timber and green arbours
Presence detector for lighting, after hour tenancy lighting control
Extensive energy metering through the building for tenant and landlord facilities

CLIENT BRIEF/PROJECT CHALLENGES

Originally, the space was designed to be very open with no walls, but as the operational functions started to evolve the designers saw the need for walls and partitioned spaces.

OUR SOLUTION

Floors have been designed for complete flexibility with re-locatable walls located around the perimeter. The addition of walls required our lighting experts to reconsider the original lighting layout and dynamic.

OUTCOME/CLIENT BENEFITS

The way in which these have been designed still allows the building to feel very spacious, open and collaborative.

KEY FACTS

The architects didn’t want linear lights, however, the building did require asymmetric, linear lighting outputs. The solution stemmed from a box of scattered matches. The architects spilt a box of matches across the floor plans. Where the matches fell, on top of one another or standalone, originated inspiration for the lighting design in the building. The building has 6 x higher fresh air rates than required by the building code. It is the largest purpose built, co-working space in the Southern Hemisphere. #1 –Rated-Seven Green Star Building in NZ to date.