Showcase
- NZILA Award of Excellence Institutional and Commercial — 2022
The Galbraith’s Alehouse beer garden pays homage to the history and context of the site by finding the common ground between pubs, libraries and gardens. They all tell stories. It was this concept that was applied to the design of Galbraith’s Alehouse beer garden.
Originally Grafton Public Library, built in 1913, the site has been Galbraith’s Alehouse since 1995. Much like a book and a beer, the garden offers complexity, balance, sensory experience and satisfaction. The garden is an evolving story that changes through the seasons and welcomes patrons as flowers erupt in the spring.
The project is significant to the region as it offers a unique green space for one to discover in central Auckland. It offers an opportunity to connect with each other, plants and our environment. The garden is almost 100% permeable and offers a complex and diverse plant palette of edibles, perennials and natives.
A garden that acknowledges its past, its context and its place in a climate and biodiversity crisis.
Judges’ Citation:
With the feel of suburbia in the 60’s or a laid back beach yard, the Galbraith’s Alehouse Beer Garden is instead a well-coordinated, coherent, sheltered, relaxing space in inner-city Auckland. The brick and trellis surrounds are evocative of an earlier era, the permeable pale gravel retained by recycled kerb stones tell more mixed ancestry stories, and the attractive planting creates a restfulness which could make a lazy late afternoon in summer, bliss.
There are too few places today where a beer garden really means an outdoor area, where there is room to enjoy a drink with less concern about virus transmission, and which are well designed and maintained. This garden unfolds as you enter, and immediately gives a feeling of a fun space, seemingly simple, yet with multi-levelled attractive spaces. Galbraith's Alehouse Beer Garden is refreshingly informal and has successfully delivered a beautiful and inviting space which complements its commercial intent.
Client:
Keith Galbraith
Company:
Neville Design Studio
Internal collaborators:
Richard Neville
Key contractors:
Feature Landscapes
Clayton Tutty Construction
North Harbour Stonemasons
Metalwerks
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