The Greenhouse
As part of its growth globally, Brickworks is now operating as a standalone brand in New Zealand. Its New Zealand product range includes bricks, roof tiles, paving, advanced cladding systems and masonry block.
Brickworks has already made its mark in Auckland, with a project that features a facade created from 150,000 iridescent, green-glazed bricks. The apartment building, designed and built by Ockham Residential, is called The Greenhouse and has become Ponsonby’s newest landmark.
At 37 metres high, The Greenhouse is the inner-city suburb’s tallest building and can be seen across the city. For Ockham Residential’s CEO William Deihl, this was a key consideration in creating a building that was “as beautiful as possible”. Another key aspect of the design brief was to create apartments that acted as private havens, removed from the hustle and bustle of the city, which Deihl suggests is achieved through the “solid feel you get from a brick building”.
Finding the ideal brick for The Greenhouse wasn’t an easy task, however, and there was a worldwide search to unearth the right combination of clay and glaze. After four years, and in partnership with the Brickworks export team, the perfect brick was eventually found in Italy, manufactured by S.Anselmo, an innovative company with a rich history of brickmaking stretching back five generations. The exterior glaze was custom-made for The Greenhouse, with the colour a nod to the verdant Waitākere Ranges to the west of Auckland.
The result is an extraordinary building that shimmers in the full sun, gradually shifting to a more grounded green as the daylight dissipates. “The beautiful thing about these glazed bricks is that at 11am in the middle of summer, you can have anything from a silver to an iridescent green to a jet-black brick on a single facade,” says Deihl.
The bricks are just one aspect of Ockham Residential’s desire to, as head architect Tania Wong says, “bring the outside in” through the choice of materials, which includes oak flooring, warm walnut cabinetry and slate on the kitchen islands and bathroom walls. The Art Deco-esque chevron pattern of the floors is echoed in the ground-floor window grilles, which were inspired by the feathers of native birds.
“They’re beautiful – luminous, elegant and an incredible deep, rich colour,” says Wong of the bricks. “They certainly will make The Greenhouse a landmark building.”
The bricks form a series of arches on Williamson Avenue, echoing the surrounding Victorian-era architecture, but it’s the Pollen Street entrance that is the dramatic high point. Here, custom-shaped bricks rise into a vaulted-ceiling vestibule, immersing residents and guests in the full splendour of the shade-shifting glaze before leading them into the lobby and its dazzling brass lifts. “They’re beautiful – luminous, elegant and an incredible deep, rich colour,” says Wong of the bricks. “They certainly will make The Greenhouse a landmark building.”
Bricks have historically been favoured in Auckland’s industrial buildings thanks to their durable, low-maintenance qualities. However, projects such as The Greenhouse show the limitless potential for brick to underpin sophisticated design and shape revered buildings that can be enjoyed for generations. With other glazed-brick projects in the pipeline for Brickworks, the future of brick-led architecture in Aotearoa certainly looks bright.
Architecture and interior design by Ockham Residential. Build by Ockham Construction. Bricks by Brickworks.
