BNZ Theatre - Factory Interview

Standing within the finished space, you witness the timeless beauty of a classic opera theatre, and you experience ultramodern functionality – but the one thing you don’t see is the hard work and creative ingenuity that brought the project to life.

After all, Featurecraft is a boutique joinery company... so how did we pull this off? How did we manage to deliver so many challenging custom pieces for one of New Zealand’s most prestigious new projects?

We had an in-depth conversation with our very own craftspeople about this experience, and James Frings, our factory manager, emphasised the ‘sheer scale’ of the project. To put the work into context, the back fixing for the panels required approximately 80,000 screws, all screwed in one at a time. Start factoring in all the other steps – for example, making the battens, sanding the battens, filling the battens, staining the battens, cutting the battens, coating the battens - and it becomes clear when viewing the completed masterpiece that this was a truly massive undertaking.  

The Featurecraft team, however, is accustomed to achieving the improbable. We’ve known for a long time that what other people perceive as limitations are actually our biggest strengths. For instance, our team may not be large, but it includes the very best talent we could source locally and internationally. As Oliver Klett, Senior Craftsman, explained, it takes ‘brain power... to work out how to make the product – make it really, really fast. You make a prototype of something and then you get told, hey, we need to go from four a day to ten or fifteen a day.'  

This is the kind of problem-solving that requires years of experience, both in terms of artistic woodworking, and in terms of production line management – and we have all of that within our tight-knit team. That’s how we were able to put together such complex custom pieces. And the best part? The solutions invented by our team are now being used on future projects, helping us to work more efficiently and create better decorative systems. It’s the agility of our team that allows us to brainstorm new ideas and make fast changes, turning ‘impossible’ visions into reality.  

Of course, expertise is one part of the story; passion is the other. Oliver tells us that ‘if you go to work for money, then you have a problem... You go to work because you have passion and you see progress.’  

The BNZ Theatre is a testament to that passion. It’s such a pleasure to see our systems integrated into this beautiful space, and to enjoy our client’s vision in its entirety. Brian Craw, Senior Craftsman, put it well when he said that ‘it's not just the panels that look good in there, it's the whole concept of the building, the shape, the size, the colours, the drapes... everything makes those panels look good as much as the panels make the building look good. [The architects] must have been visionaries to know that that's what it was going to look like when it was finished.’

That’s the passion that drives our whole team forward: the satisfaction of a completed project, where all the pieces come together and you see the whole picture. And we know we’re not the only ones who feel that way. Brian and Oliver both acknowledged the hard work of the installers who set up our curved panels, making sure that they looked great in situ. Oliver gave us this perspective: ‘what it really comes down to on a project like this [is] teamwork... and then everything comes together. You can’t really take personal credit for this.’  

So, here’s to the BNZ Theatre project, and to everyone involved, from the architects at Jasmax, to the team at Foster Construction Group, and to the many suppliers and service providers that played a part. A great experience, one that takes us boldly into the future.

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