Located on the hillside proximate to the CBD of Nelson, this six-level residential development comprises 31 private apartments with sweeping views across the bay and city.
The building delivers a sensitive model of medium density living and includes one-bedroom units to luxury penthouse suites. It optimises site constraints, view corridors, and materiality to deliver a building designed to enhance the resident experience.
The Urban Design Panel who oversaw the RC process considered multiple criteria to ensure contextual fit and considered the use of mass timber an enormous advantage.
A concrete podium for garaging supports the residential levels above. Mass timber is the primary structure with CLT floors, bracing walls, stairs, lift shaft and roof. Minimal steel posts and beams and lightweight timber frame make up the balance. Life cycle assessment confirms the building sequesters 73,647 kg of CO₂, while an equivalent steel and concrete alternative would have emitted 2,264,718 kg, more than thirty-fold reduction in embodied carbon.
Aligning the grids of carparking to apartment layout allowing economic use of CLT was challenging. CLT was key to resolving the challenges of a multi-storey building on a constrained hillside site. This included reducing foundation loads, improved logistics on delivering and lifting on a very tight site, and speed of construction. The first level saw teething problems but reduced to 9 days on the levels above. Steel was used for the open balconies, breezeway and to support the CLT roof, ensuring these areas remained open to the view with minimal vertical structure. The precision of prefabrication ensured tighter tolerances and improved acoustic performance; post construction testing recorded a “significant margin of comfort”.
Careful coordination of panel junctions, connection detailing, and service penetrations allowed the timber to perform structurally while maintaining efficient service runs. The stairwell, lift and service shaft are located centrally yet with a strong connection to the exterior. There is easy access from the driveway, internal garaging and apartments. The accuracy of the lift shaft shocked the lift provider. The deletion of a seismic joint to the two parts of the building was an engineering innovation driven by site constraints. A screw fixing detail, first considered in a thesis at Canterbury University, was used in place of a traditional solution.
The common stair is light filled with views over the city. Mass timber has been limed, surface treated for fire and exposed to the stairwell, entry area and common areas creating a warm atmosphere. With fixings expressed this leaves no doubt on the primary components of this building’s construction. A mix of cladding materials; plaster, tray profiles, and natural tones add depth and texture, maintaining budget and integrating the building within context.
This design team had previously worked for three years on a government Research and Development project focusing on mass timber for three level residential buildings. Taking these lessons to the private sector, creating private, warm and calm environments for residents has provided true satisfaction to the team. For the wider timber industry in New Zealand, it demonstrates real progress.
