Centrum

Six commercial tenancies with six distinct street identities

AO Architecture designed Centrum, a six-tenancy office-and-warehouse development within Rolleston’s IZONE Southern Business Hub. A repeated commercial brief could easily have produced six near-identical units. Instead, we gave each tenancy its own frontage and entrance while keeping the development part of one architectural composition. Warehouses and storage sit behind the two-level offices, leaving the public face of each business towards the landscaped reserve.

Six businesses, six front doors

Each tenancy follows the same basic programme, but the office frontages do not simply repeat. Timber, precast concrete, aluminium composite panel and profiled metal are combined differently across the six units, with the material treatment wrapping around entrances and office volumes.

That variation makes the individual businesses easier to identify while retaining a common scale and material language across the development. In the finished building, neighbouring tenancies can sit side by side and still have clearly different front doors.

Putting the offices towards the outlook

The site fronts a landscaped central reserve, so we positioned the offices towards it and placed the larger warehouse spaces behind. From the upper level, large windows look across the reserve and towards the Southern Alps.

The office volumes also project forward of the warehouse line. That move strengthens the street frontage and creates sheltered parking underneath, allowing one part of the building to do two jobs.

Adding detail to a repeated commercial brief

The same approach continues at a smaller scale. Precast concrete figure-eight forms mark the boardroom areas, adding a deliberately architectural element within an otherwise straightforward commercial programme.

Timber soffits, deep glazed corners and exposed precast surfaces give the frontages depth up close. From inside the upper offices, the glazing turns the reserve and distant mountains into part of the working environment.

AO Architecture provided full architectural design, contract administration and construction observation.