The Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) is a treasured Auckland venue, popular with children and local, national and international visitors. When MOTAT needed a new display hall to showcase an impressive collection of aircraft, they called in the expert team at Holmes to design a structure that would do justice to their exceptional exhibits.
MOTAT required a large clear span, much like an aircraft hangar. But, while a hangar often lives and dies by its functionality, MOTAT also needed the structure to be visually and atmospherically compelling—a space where visitors feel engaged and inspired. Holmes designed a striking timber structure, using laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The building features portal frames that achieve a 42m clear span—the longest timber span in New Zealand—ensuring a seamless exhibition space. The structure is 55m long, 50m wide and 15m high, and fitted out to MOTAT’s very high standards of presentation.
The MOTAT project has been awarded several prestigious awards. It received local and national NZIA awards for Sustainable Architecture and a local NZIA award for Public Architecture. NZ Wood recognized the project in the Clever Wood Solutions category. Additionally, it earned a High Commendation for Commercial Engineering Excellence and a Sustainability Commendation.
The redevelopment of Sydney’s former David Jones building has converted an iconic piece of Sydney’s history into an impressive mixed-use development. The project features an additional 22-storey tower with 98 luxury residential apartments, alongside a transformed heritage podium offering 11,500m2 of modern workspaces and an extension to Westfield Sydney’s luxury retail offering.
Advanced Structural Fire Analysis
The Holmes’ team of structural fire engineers undertook structural fire analyses to enable the existing heritage structural system to accommodate the additional tower on top. This analysis was to understand the holistic behaviour of the whole structural frame under severe fire exposure, and to investigate if the existing building structure could support the new structure.
Our analysis showed that despite its age and the non-compliant concrete covers, the existing structural frame could maintain structural stability under exposure to severe fully developed post-flashover fires. The resulting analysis also provided quantification of the structural behaviour of the building in the event of a severe fire. The results revealed that the required Fire Resistance Levels (FRLs) for some of the new and existing structural members could be reduced from a 120-minute FRL to a 90-minute FRL. This provides significant cost savings for the client while preserving safety and structural integrity.
Exploring Sustainability and Carbon Reduction
Internally, our team wanted to complete further investigations to understand the impact of the reduced FRL’s, resulting from the SFE analysis and if there was a sustainability benefit as a result. It is well understood that adaptive reuse projects provide a sustainable option for redeveloping our urban centres, however with these projects comes complications to comply with current building codes. Understanding the structural fire engineering value of these projects is limited therefore our team conducted a study to calculate the reduction in carbon that was applied to the structure as a result of the structural fire design. Interestingly, these results had quite an impact!
Structural Fire Design: Fire Protection Savings
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DTS design |
Holmes SFE design |
Total Saved |
| Cafco 300 weight |
71,541kg |
6,435kg |
65,106kg |
| Embodied carbon |
40,564kg CO2 eq / kg |
3,649kg CO2 eq / kg |
36,915kg CO2 eq / kg |
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91% reduction in carbon |
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The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora is an internationally renowned centre for culture and the arts, covering a 2.2 hectare central city block. The distinctive and compelling Gothic Revival building cluster, with 23 Category 1 heritage buildings was built over the course of more than 50 years. A treasured part of Canterbury and New Zealand’s cultural heritage, The Arts Centre was severely damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes.
With 30 years of engineering experience on site at The Arts Centre, the team at Holmes was ideally placed to help bring the buildings in the complex back to life. We delivered a full seismic review and analysis of the site, using our own custom-built Non Linear Time History Analysis technology to understand the levels of damage and explore the opportunities for restoration. From an engineering point of view this project is extremely complex: no two buildings are exactly the same, each demanding new thinking and approaches.
Part of the challenge of The Arts Centre project, and other heritage restorations, is the need to preserve the heritage features that make the site special with protecting life. Robust, resilient structures that still exude the personality and character that makes The Arts Centre so special is the ultimate end game. Too often, heritage restoration fails in that regard, with intrusive and obvious structural engineering interventions irrevocably changing the character of the building. In that way, heritage engineering requires a more personal connection with the structures than many new builds might—basing our team onsite at The Arts Centre for more than four years after decades of ongoing work has definitely cemented that deep connection.
With the many different buildings, site conditions and levels of damage, we set out a phased plan, designing solutions to match each unique challenge. Holmes’ expert engineers took the lead on the project management, bringing the many contributors together to get the project moving in the right direction. With the recent opening of the Gymnasium, the wider Arts Centre team we’re part of got to celebrate some of the incredibly hard work that’s gone in so far. But, there’s plenty more to come. This is one of the biggest heritage restorations in New Zealand’s history, and one of the largest projects of its type anywhere in the world. We’re extremely proud to have had a strong hand in bringing The Arts Centre back to life.
Developed in collaboration with award-winning architects, fjmt, Eastlakes Live has been inspired by native Australian plants and golden hues of nature. The Eastlakes shopping centre redevelopment aims to provide a revitalised destination that is integrated with modern apartment living, linking to the adjacent Eastlakes reserve.
The project has been split into two sites and stages, one on either side of Evans Avenue. The north site (being built first) is a single storey shopping mall, upon which there will be three blocks of residential units on the Podium landscaped space. The south site, currently at concept/early development will be a larger two-three storey shopping centre designed with an X formation. The ground floor will feature an extensive shopping complex, creating a unique shopping experience for not only the residents but also opening the development to the community at large. On top of the shopping centre, a large landscaped podium will house four feature residential tower blocks. The architectural form of these building will be impressive with the largest residential tower in an arc formation.
Based on the preliminary architectural drawings, Holmes was able to identify areas where the design either required or could be enhanced by performance solutions including solutions to permit reduced fire ratings.
The retail areas in the southern site require a smoke exhaust system, however rather than taking the broad approach specified in the building code, we have undertaken Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of the retail malls to predict the movement of smoke from a number of hypothetical fires. This enables a more efficiently designed smoke exhaust system, and additionally will intend for the smoke zones to be larger than those permitted in the building code. Holmes in addition to the retail space added significant value and design flexibility to the project by assessing the holistic risk of the residential portions of the building based on its use and specific design intent.
Assessing a project and how the design can be advanced using performance-based design is what our team strives to develop, resulting in a design solution that is advantageous to all stakeholders involved, with advanced safety for the end users as the ultimate focus.