Young Hunter House on Victoria Street is the first of it's type to be built in New Zealand and Contract Construction are proud and excited to be involved with such ground breaking construction.
Structurally designed by Kirk Roberts Consulting Engineers Ltd, the building is a post tensioned timber frame, relying on strand cables within the beams and steel energy dissipaters clamps at the junctions to seismically strengthen and brace the building. The building is designed to excel in a staggering one-in-2500-year event with controllable, minimal and repairable damage.
Young Hunter House embodies two key engineering objectives. Firstly, it is self-centring, and secondly it dissipates energy. It is the realisation of these objectives through post-tensioned LVL beams and columns that makes this building an example of world best practice. Damage is concentrated to replaceable ductile links.
The building system was chosen to satisfy the client’s passion for a safe, low damage and easily repairable structure, while using timber as an architectural feature.
The architectural design was completed by Sheppard & Rout Architects Ltd. The building is clad in glass on two sides to display the warmth of the timber interior along with the quake resistant dissipaters and post tensioned strand cable ends. Achieving a fire-retardant boundary wall necessitated two sides of the building to be concrete. Horizontal louvers on the North and closely spaced vertical louvers on the West respond to the building orientation and street presence, and reduces potential interior heat gain.
