An intimate site visit, and a small act of archival repair.
With thanks to Choice Backpackers, we were given rare access to Choice Plaza / formerly known as Orient Towers - Ron Sang's postmodern pagoda tower on Wellesley St, and the most distinctive of its kind in Aotearoa. A tiered crown layering Chinese architectural vocabulary onto a downtown high-rise, it is visually unmistakable yet almost entirely absent from New Zealand's formal architectural record.
So we decided to change that by capturing the building as it currently exists. We leave with archival content, photography, and an article published in Architecture NZ (Mar/Apr 2026)
Read on ARCHITECTURE NOW
With thanks to Darryl Sang, Sang Architects
Photography: Pat Diswat, Oliver Ray Chaudhuri, Michelle Wang
Photography: Pat Diswat
Photography: Oliver Ray-Chaudhuri
Photography: Michelle Wang
Photography: Sang Architects
'Dreaming of a Light Exhibition' for Bypass Journal, Drawing: Oliver Ray-Chaudhuri
Architecture NZ March 2026 Issue 2, page 40-41