Judge's comments:

An impressive project that pushes the boundaries of architecture and design into social and cultural good. The result is highly playful, innovative and commendably light touch on the environment. This is a project that has and will create benefits and learnings beyond its own footprint.
This project achieves a lot with a little - and celebrates an impressive target with being able to salvage 80% of all existing materials. It sets a creative benchmark for what the industry can achieve to minimise waste and deliver on innovation and sustainability outcomes - showing us all that it can be done.

Description:

This project has a long history, seeded in the creation of a progressive squat in the netherlands over a decade ago, growing through the founding of multiple community spaces in Whangārei, before landing in Whanganui-a-Tara in the form of a deeply collaborative, sustainable and caring coworking space.

two/fiftyseven is that landing - an collaborative vision that sees property as an enabler of impact, community, action and care.

two/fiftyseven brief:

We have a hunch that coworking spaces often lack the social architecture, relational infrastructure and communal energy to really help people, communities and organisations thrive.

We feel there is a massive opportunity to create a rigorous playpen-like environment for developing and testing collaborative processes together with the inhabitants and users of this space.

Our aim is to create a place that supports people, organisations and communities to easily become effectively engaged in each other's success, and to facilitate meaningful opportunities for collaboration and innovation, whilst holding a foundation of co-care at its heart.

Sustainable vision:

Taking a 700sm inner city office with 27 outdated rooms, we took the space back to its bones whilst carefully salvaging over 80% of all materials, which we spread throughout the city - glass turned into fish tanks, lights into tiny homes, and carpet tiles installed in the naenae pub. Many materials also stayed - all electrical wiring remained was re-used, sprinkler pipes turned into shelving, and all salvaged framing timber and doors provided materials for our furniture. of the new, gripdeck pre-finished ply wall lining were screw-fixed to plan for disassembly. major walls are made from circular economy X-Frame - our collaboration with Ged leading to their first consented project in the country, and resulting in an ongoing partnership developing office furniture.

Sourcing things for the space second hand, along with giving lots of things away in construction, connected two/fiftyseven to the community and allowed them to share their story long before they opened.

All this allowed two/fiftyseven to become Aotearoa’s first certified Climate Positive coworking and events space - which they’re pretty stoked about.

Result:

The space is currently used by over 70 organisations with 150 members, with its modular and transformable approach providing space for workshops, conferences, arts markets, live gigs, art exhibitions, dance classes, and a pop up restaurant within its first year of operation.

Impressions: (what two/fiftyseven is to the people who use it)

“two/fiftyseven is more than an office or place of work”
“two/fiftyseven is a place to share, spark or inspire”
“two/fiftyseven is delightful”
“two/fiftyseven is a welcoming space”
“two/fiftyseven is designed for mutual thriving”