Brought in for a revamp of a commercial building adjacent to a public square redevelopment, Architect Ronney Van Deventer (First Principles) envisioned a cladding that was anything but ordinary for maximum effect in this prime location.

Ronney worked with Murray Barlow (owner/operator of HomePlus Tauranga), from the concept stage and together they brought this vision for unique cladding to life. The final woven cladding design drew on Pacific influences and created a feeling of movement which ties in with the nearby ocean waves.

Murray is used to custom making products, but this unique design took some out of the box thinking to create, particularly with a proviso that feature lighting needed to be incorporated, to enhance customers’ enjoyment of night dining in the new top-class restaurant moving in. Murray and Rooney settled on punched aluminium sheet for the strips, not only because it was flexible enough to achieve the weave finish, but for the subtle lighting effect achieved with this semi-translucent material.

Cladding strips were created from Clearguard mesh, an aluminium screen product with 2.2mm perforations, that is mostly used for security screen doors and windows. Murray worked closely with the supplier to source the standard 3200mm length mesh in a non-standard 700mm width, which was then powder coated in NZ in the architect’s choice of colour — Dulux Duratec Matt Gull Grey.