Princeton Apartments
30 Symonds Street, Auckland CBD
- 138 units
- Twin-tower development
Princeton Apartments is a twin-tower student accommodation development at 30 Symonds Street, on one of the main arteries running through the Auckland CBD. Heartland advised on the project as consultant. The twin-tower form was the design answer to a city-centre site: two slimmer towers fit the footprint and bring light and outlook to far more of the one hundred and thirty-eight units than a single bulky block could.
Symonds Street puts the building at the centre of student Auckland, within walking distance of the city’s universities and the everyday life of the central city. Like the best student buildings, Princeton was purpose-built and set up to run that way — fully managed and serviced, with the amenities student living depends on built in rather than bolted on.
It has long been one of Auckland’s favoured student accommodation buildings, and it still does the job it was designed for, in the place that makes it work.
Why two towers beat one block
The obvious answer on a Symonds Street site is one big slab: cheapest structure, simplest core, maximum floor area. Princeton went a different way. Two slimmer towers fit the same footprint while bringing daylight and outlook to far more of the one hundred and thirty-eight units than a single bulky block could have.
Student rooms are small, so light and outlook carry a disproportionate share of whether the building is somewhere people actually want to live. Twin towers cost more to build. Twenty years of strong occupancy say the trade was right.
The first of the student towers
Heartland advised on Princeton as development consultant to Sanctuary Group, beginning in 1999. It was the earlier of the two university-precinct towers we consulted on, with Columbia on Whitaker Place following, and the two buildings together put roughly two hundred and eighty student units through the same delivery thinking.
That experience at the big end of residential development still earns its keep: reading structure, servicing and operating models at tower scale sharpens how you handle a boutique building, not the other way around.
Where is Princeton Apartments?
At 30 Symonds Street in the Auckland CBD, on the main corridor between the University of Auckland, AUT and the central city.
What was Heartland’s role at Princeton Apartments?
Heartland acted as development consultant to Sanctuary Group on the 138-unit twin-tower student accommodation development, delivered between 1999 and 2002.
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