NZ Visual Diary - entry 420
In&Out Supermarket - K Road
The history of K Road reveals a fascinating progression from its pre-1960 status as the preeminently high fashion and style precinct of Auckland to its contemporary posture as the street way left of cool.1
Today’s photograph illustrates that new K Road pose. The architectural firm that designed the recently constructed building, currently occupied by the In&Out Supermarket, imbued the structure with a reimagined K Road sensibility: syncopated modernist aesthetics coupled with playful gestures to the neighbourhood’s counter-culture vibe.
In the first instance, the large plate glass windows establish the rectilinear signature of modernist architecture. In creative counterpoint, the dramatic upward sweep of the curvilinear roof line frees itself from the prosaic constraints of rectilinear geometries. Furthermore, the neon green square at the western edge of the supermarket facade has been rendered in deconstructed form, of incomplete and re-articulated legs of a square. Notice that the bottom leg of the square is missing and its right side is cascaded.
Secondly, with the triptych arrangement of bright orange windows, the building’s design also expresses a pop genre vibe of vibrant colour and emphatic form repetition. The set of windows brilliantly exclaims a K Road anthem: vibrancy and rhythm in response to banality.
Yes, it is just a supermarket . . . but on K Road it is also and always something more than just the thing itself.
Here our three links to information on K Road’s origin story and history:
https://www.karangahaperoad.com/heritage
https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2017/07/flashback-karangahape-road/