New Zealand Commercial Design Trends Series NZ Commercial Design Trends Vol. 34/03C | Page 75

Below:By night, the upper level
facade of Xero’s new Wellington
headquarters in a reinvented
heritage building is washed with
LEDs in the firm’s brand colour.
The initial idea for the new Xero Wellington
headquarters seemed pretty straight forward – take a
heritage building, gut it, add three floors with a new
complementary upper facade and then build up a
vertical campus on the interior. However, a few issues
turned this into a more complex project that required
smart thinking from building designers Inside.
The reinvented building was to consolidate Xero
staff from three offices to this new address and with
the proposed five levels there was plenty of space
for all, says Inside’s project designer Neville Parker.
“However, to meet the strict council constraints
for the 1920s building, the new addition would have
had to be set back six metres from the existing
street frontages. This in turn would have severely
compromised the interior space available and left
the building too small for Xero’s requirements.”
Luckily Parker had a lateral-thinking solution.
“We had the idea to introduce a Stamisol mesh
screen over the new facade which was to be a pared
down modulation of the historic facade below.”
The designer put it to the council that the mesh
would downplay the upper facade by day – when
the street front is activated and the heritage face
is most noticeable. Then, at night, the building’s
upper facade would be washed with LED lights set
on the inside of the screen – thus giving the new
face prominence when it’s dark and the street is