Ironbank (Auckland)

Ironbank is a 4,500-m2, six-level mixed-used (retail and office) development on Karangahape Road, Auckland city centre, New Zealand.

[1][2] It also used a variety of environmentally friendly building facilities, such as reduced energy demands due to a design that can dispense with air conditioning.

[2] The seven-storey building has both been criticised and lauded for looking like "rusting containers", and an architecture critic noted it reminded him of "kindergarten day in a shipping yard", calling it the "most complex and adventurous building" of RTA Studio (designed for Samson Corporation).

[4][1] It then captured second place at the World Architecture Festival, a European award, making it the best-scoring New Zealand entrant ever at the festival, and being praised for "Its sophisticated attitude to the messy urbanity of south-central Auckland".

Urban designer Ludo Campbell-Reid[6] specifically noted that the building was greater than the sum of its parts, that it would help re-invigorate Karangahape Road and its backstreets, and that unlike most buildings, it looked better from the back than from the front side.