Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Architect: Monk Mackenzie.

The Foodstuffs North Island head office in New Zealand is a purpose-built home for one of the largest food suppliers in the country. The building is designed to emerge from the surrounding landscape, with earth bunds at both ends of the building rising to meet a concrete roof that arcs across the building’s 100m length. The site is located on a headland in Auckland’s Manukau Harbour, close to the historic Maori settlement of Ihumatao and significant archaeological reserve of Otuataua Stonefields and volcanic crater. The building’s materiality and tones read as a continuum of the landscape, with coastal tones enveloping the earth berms and NZ basalt slabs leading visitors into the building. The interior employs dramatic cuts and excavations to shape a central atrium, draped in an undulating brass mesh that forms striking top-lit spaces inter-connecting the building’s floors. The open planning, centralised cores and unitised glazing all encourage an unobstructed connection by the occupants to the idyllic and culturally rich surrounding.