Blue Mountains Campus

Blue Mountains Campus is a sustainable and resilient campus designed to meet the growing demand for flexible commercial and retail space within the Wellington Region.

Formerly the AgResearch centre in Upper Hutt’s Wallaceville, the five hectare park-style campus has a mix of refurbished existing and heritage structures, new low-rise commercial buildings, and landscaped public spaces. The new campus offers 36,000 square metres of flexible and resilient commercial space suitable for a wide-range of uses – including office, retail and specialist spaces. 

New buildings are designed to be highly sustainable with energy monitoring systems incorporated throughout. The buildings also feature a strong amenity offering for employees incorporating large amounts of natural light, fresh air ventilation, and high thermal performance, making the campus efficient to run and comfortable to work in. 

Studio Pacific worked with Willis Bond, RCP, Dunning Thornton Consultants, Beca and LT McGuinness Ltd to deliver Blue Mountains Campus.

 

Designed for the Environment 

Typifying 1970s institutional architecture the Buddle Building has been lifted from its past into a future where sustainability and occupant well-being are a primary focus.

Sustainable features include:

• The inefficient façade was replaced with a new light timber framed insulated façade, warm roof and new high-performance double glazing, ensuring long-term comfort and operational efficiencies.
• A whole building Life Cycle Assessment indicates very low up-front embodied carbon of only 352kgCO2-e/m2 (around 39% less compared to an equivalent new build).
• Original gas heating systems have been replaced with an all-electric efficient design supporting the future minimum 5 Star NABERSNZ certification target (representing around 60% less operational carbon than a typical New Zealand commercial office).
• Beca’s advanced BTune building tuning service will be used to continuously monitor and optimise in-use building performance.
• A key focus on sustainable material selections.
• Continuous evaluation of structural interventions to reduce demolition and reuse existing material.