Case study · Civic · Whangamarino

A community room with no back.

Brief: one room for everything — markets, tangi overflow, music practice, voting days. Our answer: a pavilion whose north face vanishes entirely, so the room and the reserve become one space on fine days.

Floor area: 240 m²
Clear span: 11.4 m
Primary materials: LVL + concrete
Completed: 2024

Light study

The same room, three times a day.

Try the controls — the pavilion was modelled hour-by-hour before a single wall was drawn.

Time of day

On a live project this panel would render the actual hour-by-hour solar model used during design. The principle is real: Meridian buildings are light-modelled before they're documented.

The argument

Structure, envelope, circulation, ground.

Structure

One floating roof

An 11.4-metre LVL portal span lets the walls stop being structural — they became doors instead.

Envelope

The disappearing north

Nine stacking doors on the reserve face; the south wall is solid, insulated concrete for the southerly that funnels down the valley.

Circulation

Two axes

One along the ridge (bikes, prams, trolleys), one across (people). Where they cross, the floor changes to expose aggregate — free wayfinding.

Ground

A floor that drains

The whole plane falls 1:60 to a rain garden, so the building needs no internal floor waste.

Outcomes

What the community measured.

Used 6 days a week in its first winter — the stacked doors mean even partially open, the hall breathes. The council's bookings sheet needed a second column.

Maintenance is a broom. Floors are sealed concrete; the LVL roof needs recoating on the same cycle as the reserve's playground equipment.

A note on truth

This case study is a fictional demonstration by 188 Website Studio. The site, the brief and the numbers are invented — the light study above, however, works exactly as a live one would.

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