Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand

Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand

Ground-breaking architectural stainless façade

In 2012, Rivet submitted a tender to fabricate a ground-breaking architectural stainless façade. There were no construction drawings – no plan. Just an idea, which was to wrap a building in curved polished stainless steel. 

By 2015 the $2.8 million dollar installation was complete, putting Rivet on the map at an international level as ‘the little sheet metal shop with big potential’. 

The original concept for this iconic project was to have uninterrupted columns of stainless steel from the top to the bottom of the building, but this would be extremely challenging to achieve, and budget was a concern. 

Rivet developed a method of overlapping sheets in a 6m tall cascade of removable, serviceable panels. 33.5 tonnes of grade 316 mirror polished stainless steel was used to create this architectural masterpiece.

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