Atlas Quarter

Client:
Fletcher Living

Location:
Ōtautahi Christchurch

Completion:
2018

Size:
7,800m²

Project Value:
$27.5m

Design Partner
DKO

Contact:
Carsten Auer

Atlas Quarter is a new residential development offering a combination of apartment and mews buildings. New uses in the area since the Canterbury earthquakes give the development’s surrounding context an emerging vibrancy. A number of the character warehouse buildings have been or are being converted to bars, restaurants and cafés, and young and creative businesses looking for distinctive and affordable premises are moving to the area.

Many of these new ventures reference the previous, gritty and industrial usage of the area in the materiality and style of the buildings and their branding. Similarly, the Atlas Quarter redevelopment seeks to compliment this context and provide exciting new urban residences.

The site is orientated north-south, and the primary building elements follow this orientation with residential units typically having an east and/or west aspect. The building elements are pulled back from the long site boundaries to afford good outlook and daylight access independent of current or future surrounding developments.

The development has a strong street frontage onto the increasingly vibrant Welles Street. At the southern end, the built form is bookended by the southern wing of one of the apartment buildings to create a contained and sheltered internal site environment. Units within this building all face north. A pedestrian through-site link via the central communal space provides north-south connectivity.

The proposal introduces a range of scales and typologies in order to create variety and sense of identity and aim to achieve an economically-sustainable mix and appropriate density across the site.

The design of the individual buildings was a collaboration between Architectus, responsible for the design of the two apartment buildings within the site, and DKO, responsible for the design of the town houses and the Welles Street apartment building.

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