Taking a break from a very busy year to recollect some of the things we have achieved.
Our first project was completed and recently won this practices first award. This was a great thrill for a modest project enabling the curious and innovative learning at Douglas Park School.
The coming months will see several more projects reaching completion. We have the rebuild of Lepperton School just about to finish along with projects at Muritai School, Te Aro School and several residential projects.
Te Aro School's Reading Recovery Centre uses prefabricated panels that were erected and enclosed in one day.
We have continued to master plan new and existing schools with Manakura and St Bredan's School recent completed and work at Tongariro School and Chanel College to start in the new year.
We have developed our master plan for Sacred Heart College, including enlargement and refurbishment of the chapel and a connected library/admin/learning Hub Building. The first project extending the technology building will start on site in term 1 while we complete concept design for the Hub.
Early in the year we purchased EcoDesigner Star, an add on for Archicad. This allows us to model the thermal environment of a building throughout the year. We have used this to show that we could refit a building in Masterton where the internal temperature reached the mid 40's to be a low energy building without overheating. The importance of the window specification is shown below by the 42% reduction in overheating changing from double glazed aluminium to triple glazed PVC. We were able to show that the chapel at Sacred Heart, which had always been very cold could comfortable while needing little heating.
We have continued a range of residential projects both big and small. It's been great to have an office the local community can just drop into.
The most significant of these is a new house on almost no site (at least little flat site) that is being designed to Passive House standards. After a detailed concept design estimate we are very excited to be proceeding with the delivery of the home in 2019.
