Wellington City Mission Whakamaru

The Wellington City Mission’s new base, Whakamaru, stands out both as a transformative community facility and as an innovative hybrid engineered timber and steel structure.

Whakamaru includes 35 apartments, 24-hour public bathrooms, showers and laundry, a social supermarket, food warehouse including a chiller and cold store, a 110-seat café with a full commercial kitchen, a medical centre with 9 consulting rooms, a dentist, meeting rooms, office spaces and a chapel, all centred around a light-filled three-storey atrium.

The hybrid CLT flooring and steel frame structure is a first for Wellington. Chosen for sustainability and efficiency, it allowed us to maximise opportunities for offsite manufacturing, leading to a faster, lighter and cheaper build that looks incredible.

We were involved on an ECI basis well before we started on site, forming a close partnership with the consultant team. With immovable deadlines to meet to access Government funding, we used a shared BIM model to coordinate the design and then the build. This allowed the project team to adapt the design to meet the client’s needs as they evolved and to flag and solve issues early, avoiding rework. The shared commitment to working as a unified, solutions-focused team was integral to project’s success and hugely rewarding for everyone involved.

The site was happy and productive, with plenty of milestone celebrations that often involved the entire neighbourhood as the client built relationships in their new location. There were also frequent site visits with industry groups to showcase the build to the wider construction community.

Whakamaru stands as testament to a shared vision for an inclusive community facility, with everyone involved in the build working collaboratively to deliver a place that will change lives.