Description:

The Challenge
8 Willis Street is the new workplace for Stats NZ and the Ministry for the Environment in Wellington. Spread over 12 levels with co-working spaces designed to be used by cross-disciplinary teams, the wayfinding core design narrative expresses concepts related to Papatūānuku.

The Opportunity
Early hui with the cultural team revealed the strong feminine narrative present in the project's whakapapa. In Te Ao Māori weaving is customarily a female artform and symbolises the coming together of people and place. The strong grid-like mathematical approach of Tāniko weaving fit this project well.

This wayfinding design approach weaves conceptual links between mathematics, pattern-making, and data to represent core tasks undertaken by anchor tenants Stats NZ and the Ministry for the Environment. Additionally, Fibonacci was selected to express a common mathematical form found in flora and fauna which references the work undertaken by the Ministry for the Environment within the natural world.

The Woven Story
Together, the forms of Tāniko weaving, Abacus and Fibonacci, have been expressed through key sign types, bespoke typography and icon sets.

Level identifications throughout the building – right from the external addressing signage on the street level up to level 11 – have been treated as site specific artworks. Using the interior colour palette, each level ID combines the Fibonacci pattern and colours to create a series of landmarks.

Fibonacci has also been integrated throughout the fit out by cutting into kai stations, applied to vast acoustic surfaces, extensive glazing manifestations, and meeting room walls. Functional signage has been economically treated using colour-matched, timber-look panels and the typographic wayfinding graphics.

Photography by Andy Spain and Neil Pardington.