Auckland International Airport Ltd | Foodstuffs North Island
Landscape Architect: Bespoke
Completion 2020
Thomas Seear Budd + Barry Tobin
The Food Stuffs North Island headquarters is conceived conceptually as an elegant structure that emerges from the surrounding landscape. Constructed earth bunds at both ends of the building rise to meet a concrete roof that arcs across the building’s 100m length. This singular gesture emphasizes the co-operative grocer’s connections with the land and the movement from garden to table - a movement from the rawness of the landscape to the crafted interior.
The site is located on a very charged headland in Auckland’s Manukau Harbour in close proximity to the historic Maori settlement of Ihumatao and significant archaeological reserve of Otuataua Stonefields and volcanic crater. The volcanic stone garden mounds, kumara pits, terraces and middens here date back to the 12th century and are some of our earliest examples of food production and storage in Aotearoa, New Zealand.