Recently, Fisher & Paykel celebrated the opening of their flagship Auckland Experience Centre with a pōwhiri by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.
Fisher & Paykel’s ambition is to be the global number one luxury appliance brand, so now they’ve created an experience centre where partners and customers can experience exactly what ‘Designed in Aotearoa New Zealand’ means – to learn about a premium design language inspired by the natural world and by insights into the way people live.
While Fisher & Paykel has experience centres in locations all around the world, the Auckland Experience Centre is the largest in terms of scope and ambition. The building has a large, 820 sqm floorplate, and showcases the potential of Fisher & Paykel appliances in spaces designed in partnership with three of the world’s great luxury kitchen companies – Boffi, Arclinea and Henrybuilt.
The heart of the experience centre is the Social Kitchen, where Fisher & Paykel’s in-house chefs lead mastery of temperature culinary experiences using sustainably sourced ingredients and award-winning New Zealand wines.
Other spaces include a luxury laundry and wardrobe area, also designed with Boffi, an outdoor kitchen presenting Fisher & Paykel’s outdoor cooking brand DCS, a showcase of luxury appliance solutions in an apartment setting, and several product galleries.
In total, around 250 products are on display and the experience centre also operates as a working space for visiting architects and designers. The Plan & Choose Studio is equipped with all the material, product and specification resources required to work through project options and make considered choices.
The Auckland Experience Centre’s luxury kitchens are an acknowledgement of Fisher & Paykel’s global outlook. Hero kitchen design partners Arclinea and Boffi are both from Italy, while Henrybuilt is a Seattle, USA-based kitchen company.
Each kitchen illustrates the design potential of a Fisher & Paykel product style and commitment to design freedom. They also show how combinations of products can be combined to create solutions that meet a user’s specific needs.
Boffi, Arclinea and Henrybuilt are renowned for heritage and continuity, design innovation, kitchen systems and the quality of their craft and construction. Like Fisher & Paykel, they have a commitment to design and detail resolution at the highest level. Each kitchen shows how Fisher & Paykel products can be expressed, detailed and integrated in the most beautiful ways.”
The Minimal Kitchen, designed with Boffi, is materially pared-back and monochrome. It shows how combining seamlessly integrated products with visually recessive Fisher & Paykel Minimal style appliances can maintain the aesthetic cohesiveness of the architectural concept.
In comparison, the Contemporary Kitchen, the result of a partnership with Arclinea, has a more layered and additive material approach that is perfectly complemented by Fisher & Paykel Contemporary style appliances.
The Professional Kitchen is the first Henrybuilt kitchen built in the southern hemisphere. It showcases the robust stainless-steel aesthetic of Fisher & Paykel Professional style appliances within a very crafted, solid-timber environment.
The Social Kitchen, another Arclinea collaboration is the heart of the Auckland Experience Centre. It sits alongside a monumental, 9m-long dining table of 45,000-year-old reclaimed kauri and will host 2culinary experiences with chefs using sustainably sourced ingredients and award-winning New Zealand wines to bring to life the insights behind Fisher & Paykel’s appliance solutions.
For guests, the opportunity is to see and taste how perfect results can be achieved through optimised food and wine care, and mastery of temperature based on combinations of appliances working seamlessly together while cooking. The Social Kitchen also highlights the ergonomic, social and spatial benefits of exceptional DishDrawerTM Dishwashers and quiet, powerful ventilation products.
The Experience Centre’s laundry and wardrobe areas have also been designed with Boffi –illustrating how Fisher & Paykel is now considering the future of the laundry as a fabric-care ecosystem.
Integrated seamlessly into the Boffi cabinetry is Fisher & Paykel’s new Fabric Care Cabinet, which provides a range of alternatives to machine washing and drying, such as steam refresh, drying and deodorising options, with racking and hanging solutions to help preserve the qualities and lifespan of garments.
Find the Auckland Experience Centre at 199 Great North Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland 1021.
Main entrance: Corner Great North Road and Turakina Street.
For more information, see: https://www.fisherpaykel.com/nz/inspiration/experience-centres/auckland.