Ethel Street Warehouses Fearon Hay Architects
Morningside Precinct Cheshire Architects

Join the architects, project teams and meet some of the proprietors on this tour through two of Morningside’s newest developments — Ethel Street Warehouses and the Morningside Precinct.

Fearon Hay Architects’ Ethel Street Warehouses is the conversion of a 1950’s warehouse into a contemporary character office space in the Auckland suburb of Morningside. The design concept was to remove the box-like offices that addressed the street, and to express the repetitive gable roof form beyond. A new language of glazing, retained concrete wall portions and sliding shed doors presents the warehouse interior volumes to the street, taking advantage of the sites northern aspect and allowing natural light to fill to the double height shed spaces. A mezzanine floor, set back from the façade, creates an intimate space between two double height volumes either side within each shed. White saturated, raw, natural materials make up the interior material palette — waiting patiently for their tenants to inhabit and make them their own.

The Cheshire Architects-designed Morningside Precinct is a new hospitality destination located in Morningside, not far from a rail line in Auckland's city fringe. Since opening in late 2018 with 11 independent businesses, the location boasts a local tavern, cider bar, dessert bar, café, dumpling house, media and tech businesses, and a 450 square meter glasshouse event space filled with trees and plants.

The precinct is set out to be the opposite of a mall, and to give Morningside a new life. The vision is not so much set to an ideal finished state, but to a collective that evolves with the changing landscape.