In the second semester of 2018, and as part of my Design Studio 3 course, I designed a high-rise building for a site on Shortland Street in Auckland’s CBD. The brief for this project stipulated that the building should be a 20-storey mixed-use high-rise that responded to the context of the surrounding area. The site itself has a dual road frontage to Shortland Street and Fort Street, and a pedestrian accessway between the two streets needed to be accommodated.

The form of this design stems from sine waves. The sine wave provides a geometric form that unifies three conceptual ideas that are drawn from the surrounding context:

• Circular artforms of the surrounding area. Sine waves and circles are geometrically linked.
• Fashion retail in the local area. The smooth flow of fabric can be conceptualised as the curvy sine wave.
• Historical reference to the site being located on the foreshore. The fluid waveform of the sine wave represents the sea breaking on the historical foreshore.

Taking these three ideas and distilling them into a single geometric form of the sine curve has led to a concept-driven design that produces the curvaceous form. Through continual refinement of the form, and utilising the sine wave as the geometric driver, the resulting from fluidly curves upwards while guiding visitors naturally through the pedestrian walkway between the two streets.

The building responds to its immediate surroundings by connecting with the buildings on each side where the neighbouring walls are solid, and then graciously pulling back to allow light into the neighbouring buildings. This provides a reflection of the close physical context, giving reference to the existing, while still standing alone as its own unique form.