The Meteor

Hamilton, Waikato

The former Innes bottling factory building, at the south end of the main street, has been revived as a creative community space.  The ‘Black Box’ theatre is complemented by a number of ancillary spaces that were refurbished in stages.

PAUA designed the premises for what was originally Wintec’s business incubator, 'SODA Inc.', on the mezzanine floor in 2006-08. 

There is a mix of shared collaboration spaces, semi-enclosed offices, and enclosed meeting space. 

We also designed an expansion into unused space alongside in 2009, and in 2013 a further expansion was achieved by adding a continuous bench running around two sides of the glass atrium wall, with individual power, data and lighting for thirteen casual ‘hot desking’ users. 

The design of new elements reference the original use of the building; the new stair in the lobby contains small chips of coloured glass set into the concrete stair treads, and the community spaces and offices upstairs similarly allude to the fizzy pop colours.

Completed 2015