Modular Hotel Rises on Queenstown’s Steepest Site

WellSmart has filed plans for a 10-level modular hotel in the heart of New Zealand’s Queenstown, marking the firm’s first fully volumetric modular project and one of the most technically complex new builds in the alpine tourist hub. The Wardle Architects-designed hotel, slated for a site at 67 Shotover Street, is planned for one of Queenstown’s steepest parcels of land—with a 20m fall across the site—and within the town’s highest seismic risk zone. The shifting ground conditions required a dramatic structural rethink, according to Wardle principal Mathew van Kooy, who says the project is effectively two distinct buildings sitting on seismic isolation plates and connected via a lightweight bridge. ▲ The hotel steps up the 20m fall across the site at Shotover Street. “The buildings sit on springs. When the ground moves, the buildings float,” van Kooy says. “It’s not something we typically design for in Australia but in Queenstown, this is business as usual. “Nothing’s flat in New Zealand.” A quiet building in a loud landscape Despite its technical ambition, the hotel is deliberately recessive. Surrounded by mountains, excavations and competing hotel projects, Wardle’s approach was to step the massing back into the hillside and minimise visual interruption of the dramatic alpine backdrop. “The dominance of the mountain in Queenstown is enormous,” van Kooy says. “We wanted a building that would sit quietly against it, not fight for attention.” The building employs a restrained palette—bronze aluminium cladding, green tiled in-situ concrete podium and punched glazing—with heavy landscaping across multiple levels to tie it back into the sloping parklands along Hay Street. A courtyard carved into the centre of the scheme would provide guest amenity in lieu of balconies. ▲ Wardle Studio partner Mathew van Kooy says modular is a good solution to labour and site constraints for the hotel. Why modular, why now The hotel will arrive in Queenstown as fully completed room pods, likely manufactured in China, and craned into position atop the seismic podium, van Kooy says. For WellSmart, the modular approach wasn’t simply aesthetic or technological curiosity—it was site necessity. “Queenstown is one of the most expensive and resource-constrained places to build,” van Kooy says. “Modular doesn’t always mean cheaper but it means earlier opening, fewer defects and fewer trades in a market where trades don’t exist.” Developer, WellSmart, is running modular across its entire hospitality pipeline, including a Kerry Hill project nearby and a resort on Lindeman Island. Both the island logistics and the Queenstown labour market made a conventional build risky. Pinwheel planning and mountain views The two buildings use a pinwheel plan, offsetting rooms so they never face each other directly and ensuring landscape views at the ends of the corridors. Room modules range from 24 to 28sq m, fully fitted with bathrooms, services, lighting and finishes before transport. Above the in-situ base, the modular towers achieve a fire-compliant seven to eight storeys each but read as 10 when measured from natural ground due to the steep fall. ▲ The modular forms sit over the top of an in-situ podium and seismic isolation plates. Van Kooy says it was the architecture studio’s first major modular design, and that the process yielded some lessons. “You have to work with the system, not against it. It front-ends everything—design, engineering, co-ordination. “But once you understand the constraints, the opportunities reveal themselves.” The modular moment Van Kooy describes the project as emblematic of a broader shift in Australasian construction thinking. While Australia remains structurally geared towards conventional construction, he believes New Zealand’s performance-based planning regime, extreme terrain and high labour costs make it a testbed for modular adoption. “Hotels are boxes—they’re perfectly suited,” he says. “The pipeline question remains but in Queenstown and remote resort markets, modular isn’t an experiment. It’s necessary.” The project is currently proceeding through the New Zealand planning portal as an amendment to an earlier approval—one Van Kooy describes as “a pretty ghastly outcome” that the revised scheme significantly improves. “Planning has changed which allowed us to create a better building with more articulation,” he says. ▲ A pocket park next to the site would help to create a pathway and green connection up the side of the development. Wardle expects clarity on public notification in the coming months. In the meantime, excavation continues across Queenstown’s central ridge as the town navigates booming tourism, escalating construction costs and a rising mountain of hospitality investment.

Modular Hotel Rises on Queenstown’s Steepest Site

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