If you've flown into, or out of, Wellington recently, you may have spotted the progress of Studio of Pacific Architecture's Terminal extension through your little porthole window, which now takes its final shape with its copper cladding going up.

As The Dom Post has reported, the building itself is incredibly difficult to see at the moment, except for carefully choreographed peepholes, and even I've had my camera pointed out the window during take off, to little avail.  

A great shot by Diego Opatowski of the Dominion Post is reproduced above, which gives a fantastic view of the sculpted shell of the building (you can see the models pictured here below, and other illustrations at SPA's project page here, which give the shell its distinctive expression), part-way between lining on the left, and the rich copper cladding on the right.


Project models developing the complex structural system. SPA


Interior render of the Terminal.  SPA

Plenty of debate rollicked around the place when this was first presented to the world over a year ago, and what I find interesting now is the '2.0 media' blogging style of the Stuff article, which has collected over 60 comments to date.  Looking through these is interesting, because it offers some sort of 'public' commentary, however warped it may be by its medium.  

Some commentators focus on the copper exterior, but "GeraldNZ" is fairly unexcited: "Pretty ugly design, but at least the colour should improve as the copper oxidises into blue-green. Unfortunately that'll take decades."

"El Scorcho" agrees, with an optimistic outlook, marred only by the last five words which I guess he/she couldn't resist: "Good on Wellington airport for stepping outside the box and building something different. I can't wait to see it finished and watch the copper roof patina into that beautiful green. Some people are so ignorant..."  And "hayleyb" rounds it off with an all-round shrug of indifference: "...It may look all clean at the moment but i wonder; A) How long will it be before the copper tarnishes? B) Will it be looked after properly? C) How will it look in 5 years? With proper care it'll be ok and retain it's ugly glory but it's better than a plain boring cement building. Personal overall opinion... Meh."  

Then "Fredd" goes and throws an unexpected one in the mix: "All well and good, BUT...Where is the green roof?
I'm disappointed to see yet another new building project in Wellington without one.
Surely such a progressive city as Wellington should have some kind of policy towards promoting green building techniques such as having living green roofs.
It's the way of the future. Check out Copenhagen's new policy, and Chicago's. All new buildings are required to have greenery on their roof."

"christine Groves" is scathing, and also can't help slinging some shit at Architects: "Who gave them the nickname "pumpkins”, the general populous has named them balls? If they are coated to prevent oxidation they won't go green, if they aren't coated they will go rotten! What a waste of money -Architects are just Artists playing with other people’s money!"

"Tyrrell" is bafflingly skeptical of architects, "... my only worry is after a few decent southerly storms, and a few howling 100k norwesters and horizontal rain - how waterproof will they be. All those odd angles and folds for water to get into, I reckon it will leak like a sieve."  Curious, as though one of the largest and respected architecture offices in New Zealand hadn't worked out how to make a frickin water-tight detail.  'Oh no! We bent a surface! Shit! What ever shall we do!'  And there I go, contributing to the mundane saga of comment-scraps.

As a lover of process, I can't help enjoy the lead image from the Dom Post of the building in flux, with its bones bared, and its folded skin slowly growing across the body of the terminal. 

But we should respect the words of "Poochee" who is considerate and patient enough to say:

"Lets wait & watch for the completion before throwing in our comments either good or bad."

If you happen to get a close(r) look, I'd love to publish some images of the interior taking shape... Anyone reading at SPA? Guy, any hook-ups?


Design by Studio of Pacific Architecture
Original report by the Dominion Post, sourced on Stuff
Client: Wellington International Airport Ltd.
Image by Diego Opatowsky