Our Building

Completely revamped in 2006 by Athfield Architects, TheNewDowse houses 11 exhibition spaces, several multi-purpose activity spaces, a sunbathed courtyard and a destination café and design shop. The $6 million dollar tune-up significantly expanded the building that was originally designed by the Structon Group in 1971. Several areas of TheNewDowse’s unique venue are also available for hire.

Rainscreen

Throughout 2006, Wellington-based artist Simon Morris worked with Athfield Architects and Fraser Engineering to design Rainscreen, the huge perforated aluminium artwork on the façade of TheNewDowse.

Rainscreen is a happy hybrid of artistic expression and eco-friendly design:  architecturally, Rainscreen provides TheNewDowse with a distinctive and expressive visual identity. Functionally, it contributes to the energy efficiency of the building. The screen’s movable panels are designed to capture and control the effects of critical western sun strike, while thousands of diamond-shaped perforations create an ever-changing shadow play in and outside the building.

Rainscreen is the result of an intricate creative process in which Fraser Engineering’s computer software developments materialised Simon’s artistic vision.

Rock Store

Using tonnes of Wairarapa river stones, engineers Sinclair Knight Merz sought to achieve similar eco-friendly goals to moderate the temperature of the building. The result was Rock Store, an innovative heating and cooling system that is the first of its kind in New Zealand. Underneath the museum’s café lies 44 square metres of wire ‘mesh’ baskets containing river stones that hold in the heat or cold.

Cooler night air is drawn in and ‘stored’ in the stones, so when the sun comes up, this chilled air is available to the museum’s air conditioning units, keeping energy costs down. This naturally tempered air is ducted to an air-conditioning plant on the roof and circulated through the galleries.