Located in Hobsonville, Metlifecare Orion Point is a new fast-growing retirement village designed to offer premium living across six modern apartment buildings, 40 modern villas, one amenity building, a pavilion, and a care building. Currently three of the six apartment buildings and nine of the villas have been completed — with three apartment buildings and 31 villas currently under construction. To keep maintenance to a minimum, durable, easy to maintain materials that would continue looking good over time were crucial for the village. Metwood’s wood grain coating hit this brief perfectly and was specified to bring accents of timber to the facade design.

“Metlifecare asked us to design a lifestyle retirement living and aged care development which provides a high level of amenity similar to hotels and resorts,” explains Ralph Soriano, Ignite Architects. “They wanted to use high quality, durable, easy to maintain cladding which would also look beautiful at the same time.” 

The facade design throughout the development features neutral tones — with rendered plaster used predominantly, and grey fibre cement panels on the upper levels. To add further visual interest, the architects looked at incorporating timber for feature walls and soffits. With natural timber out of the question due to the high level of maintenance it requires, they approached the team at Vulcan for options using aluminium cladding with a timber finish. 

“The architects approached us and said they were wanting to include some woodgrain highlights,” explains Trevor Gribble, Vulcan. “They saw aluminium as being the best option in terms of durability and maintenance.”

Between Vulcan’s partnership with Metwood over the years, and Ignite Architects’ own positive experiences using Metwood on past projects, Metwood was a natural choice. On seeing samples of potential woodgrain finishes, the architects were able to confidently specify Metwood in the Dark Australian Cedar finish for stage one and two of the development — with a lighter finish chosen for stage three and four which are still to come.

“Using Metwood on top of a durable aluminium cladding allowed us to incorporate that beautiful timber look that we'd envisioned into the facade design while at the same time complying with performance requirements,” says Ralph. “It’s also easy to maintain — If you use real timber there’s issues with fire, and ongoing maintenance, but with Metwood it's pretty much just a yearly washdown.” 

Metwood’s innovative coating process — using sublimation to embed the wood grain image into the initial powdercoated finish — is a step above standard powder coatings, according to Trevor. “Metwood's process is state-of-the-art,” he says. “The biggest problem when coating aluminium is when there are negative details — if you don't have the right equipment you get shadowing. Metwood have the latest equipment available so you don't have that shadowing at all.” 

The durability of the finish is also backed by a warranty of 25 years on the underlying powder coating and 10 years on the woodgrain finish, providing added peace of mind for building owners.

The collaboration between Vulcan and Metwood helped achieve a fantastic result. "Working as a team is a dynamic that Vulcan strives to achieve with all companies we collaborate with," says Trevor. 

“We put thousands of boards in there plus thousands of auxiliary extrusions, and did not have one piece of product rejected because of the Metwood coating,” adds Trevor. “That’s really impressive. The colour was completely consistent through the project. It all went very very easy.”

The end result is a striking woodgrain finish that brings the warmth and beauty of timber to walls and soffits, providing a softer look than plain powder coating. And importantly, the Metwood finish will ensure long term good looks and durability for the retirement village — keeping maintenance to a minimum. 

“I think it looks great,” says Ralph. “We’ve used Metwood on previous projects already and those projects were completed a few years ago and it still looks good and that gives us confidence to use Metwood again for future stages of Metlifecare Orion Point.”