Customhouse

An unfortunate trend saw new buildings for the Wellington bureaucracy being built away the existing centre of the town and in the exposed environment of the harbour edge. The Customs Department whose new building was designed by Studio Pacific Architecture followed the Statistics Department into this neck of the woods.(2010) The result was a dramatic building with a green star rating in which sunshades on the western side to protect from the setting sun have been used to decorative effect.

The building's siting on reclaimed land proved unwise and it was rendered uninhabitable by ground instability in the November 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.