ABOUT THE PROJECT
Ashburton’s stunning new library and civic centre, Te Whare Whakatere, includes a library, meeting rooms, events spaces and Council Chambers. A red brick heritage building has been retained as part of the project, where the children’s library “Pioneer Hall” is located.
Athfield Architects worked with Heritage Carpets to supply custom carpets in key areas of the project.
PIONEER HALL (children’s library)
ABOUT THE SPACE:
A space within the larger library specifically for children, where stories can be read aloud.
CONCEPT SUMMARY:
A celebration of icons of the Ashburton District. Familiar shapes and forms – including irrigation pivots, threshing machine turning circles and rows of wheat – framed and overlaid on borrowed aerial landscape patterns, featuring the Winterslow Station’s elusive black cat.
FLOORING SOLUTION:
Heritage worked with the Athfield project team to translate artwork from a local artists into a custom Axminster illustration in five shades of grey.
CHALLENGES:
Ensuring the placement of joins in the broadloom were best placed to retain the considerable detail in the design. Where possible joins were in line with the linear pattern or where the design was most plain, also giving consideration to expected traffic circulation.
COUNCIL CHAMBER & COUNCILLOR’S LOUNGE
ABOUT THE SPACE:
Where councillors meet to discuss and make decisions
CONCEPT SUMMARY:
The reach of landscape, awa and the pathways that stretch between the sea and the mountains in the district. Lines zigzag into the top corner of the Chamber floor design, as if compacted by tectonic forces, taking on topographic forms. The illustration of these lines adjusting to the forces of nature represents the shaping of ideas and decision-making within the democratic space.
FLOORING SOLUTION:
Axminster broadloom with fine detail in the pattern and careful colour selections to work in with elements in the space, including timber wall cladding and furniture, requiring very subtle colour changes at the end stage.
CHALLENGES:
Installation required a lot of planning, on-site checks and re-checks from a highly skilled team prior to install. Original measurements were taken when the spaces were still being built, so allowances needed to be made for incomplete architectural elements such as wall-linings.
This design originates from one corner of the room, and flows between spaces. The tolerance for the installer was therefore very low, so Heritage Carpets took great care to bridge the gap between the manufacturers and the installer, so that the end result honoured the design and allowed the pattern to continue between the Council Chamber and Meeting Room.
LEVEL ONE MEETING ROOM
ABOUT THE SPACE:
Meeting rooms available for use by staff.
CONCEPT SUMMARY:
The concept for the carpet on the Ground Floor and Level One meeting room is to celebrate the indigenous species of unique plants found in the Ashburton district. The carpet borrows textures and shapes from common beech tree leaves, based on a pattern formed by the interlocking leaves of golden scrubweed.
Larger motifs (such as eels and birds) are revealed as abstract forms in between the placement of the smaller shapes, deepening the biophilic connection between the design and the flora and fauna of the locale.
FLOORING SOLUTION:
Custom Axminster that carefully addressed scale and colour to achieve pattern both on a macro and micro level.
CHALLENGES:
The Heritage Carpets team adjusted the artwork to accommodate curved walls and recesses for cabinetry, so all the design elements were retained. Small shapes are arranged together to create larger patterns on the floor with negative space. Each of the small motifs is about 15cms in length, within which sits a pattern detail. This required several rounds of sampling to get the swirls and colours right; each emblem had a colour blend that needed to stand out from the base colour, so this took some discovery as to what worked optimally to create the pattern.
Products used: custom Axminster, 80/20 wool blend
AWARDS
Property Council NZ Property Industry Awards 2024:
Excellence (Sustainable Building) and Merit (Civic, Health & Arts)
PROJECT INFORMATION
ARCHITECTURE FIRM: Athfield Architects, Wellington
LEAD DESIGNER: Sophie Vial, with the project team
FLOORING CONTRACTOR: Hills Commercial
PHOTOGRAPHY: Naylor Love/Johannes van Kan, and Hazel Redmond
Heritage Carpets can work with you to create custom carpets and rugs.
Additionally we have our own range of in-house plain Axminster
and we work with New Zealand biophilic artist and designer Miranda Brown to design custom pieces with a New Zealand story.