NZ Visual Diary - entry 253
Studio One - One Ponsonby Road
Studio One (Māori-gifted name Toi Tū) is an arts organisation supported by the Auckland Council, including the governing body of the Waitematā Local Board.
The design studio Alt Group garnered a design award in 2014 for the redevelopment of the Studio One building at 1 Ponsonby Road.
In its narrative about the history of Studio One and that of the building in which Studio One is housed, the Alt Group writes:
Studio One Toi Tū is a community art organisation located in a Queen Anne Revival style building at number one Ponsonby Road. The building, which dates back to 1906, served for many decades as the Newton Police Barracks but in the late Seventies it was converted into a community cultural centre. Since then it has offered art programmes, workshops, studios and exhibitions spaces for a diverse range of arts disciplines.1
Furthermore, the Alt Group describes the most distinctive element of the building’s street-facing facade — that of dripping paint underneath each of the top-floor windows — as follows:
[T]he identity of Studio One [is] as a “simple manifestation of creative activity - dripping paint” and when you view the building that is exactly what you see. The design solution employs the building as its own advertisement. Globs of white paint - actually white-painted steel - ooze conspicuously from second-floor windows - it's as if the building is a great sponge, squeezed by the hand of an unseen artist, expunging cartoon-like paint down towards the street. It's a striking device, projecting outwardly the essence of the occupant and signaling change while easily working around any building regulations that limit permanent physical amendments to the façade of the structure.2
The Designers Institute of New Zealand
< https://designersinstitute.nz/case-study/studio-one-toi-tu/ >
The Design Institute of New Zealand
https://designersinstitute.nz/case-study/studio-one-toi-tu/