When Crown Worldwide Group launched its Crown Fine Art brand in Aotearoa in 2025, it signalled a shift in how the country’s cultural and heritage sectors might think about storage, conservation, and the long‑term stewardship of valuable objects. Now, with a purpose‑built, sustainability‑focused facility nearing completion in Porirua, that shift is about to become a reality.
Scheduled to open in August this year, the new building has been designed from the ground up to meet the needs of organisations that care for artworks, taonga, archival collections, scientific specimens, and other sensitive materials. It also offers something that has long been scarce in the Wellington region: secure, high‑spec storage that can scale from major institutions to private collectors in optimum climate controlled conditions.
Leon Hulme, Managing Director of Crown Worldwide NZ, says of the project: “Across Aotearoa we’ve heard the same message from the organisations we support: they’re caring for more valuable material, they’re seeking greener, safer solutions, and they want partners who take long‑term stewardship as seriously as they do. That’s why we invested in this new Porirua facility. It’s a national commitment to resilience: purpose‑built, sustainably engineered, and equipped with the advanced environmental controls and security standards our communities have been asking for. Ultimately, we built it to give New Zealanders confidence that their collections, records, and taonga are protected in a facility designed for the future.”
Built for the future with sustainability and resilience at its core, the Porirua facility as a major investment in sustainable, resilient infrastructure. The building is targeting 4 Star Green Star, and NZ IL3 seismic ratings, a benchmark that reflects high environmental performance and long‑term operational efficiency.
Several features stand out. The facility has on‑site solar generation to reduce reliance on the grid, rainwater harvesting and water‑efficient systems designed to maintain operations during disruptions, EV charging and low‑carbon construction materials, including responsibly sourced timber, and a shallow foundation solution that reduces embodied carbon while still meeting seismic requirements.
The architectural design, by Ashton Mitchell Architects with Q Construction and Dunning Thornton Structural Engineers, draws inspiration from the tidal forms of Te Awarua‑o‑Porirua, with glazing that references the movement of water. These elements are all are part of a broader strategy to create a facility that can protect collections even in the face of climate change, civic infrastructure strain, and seismic risk.
“The design, very much centres around it being a unique option for the sector," says Hulme, “the design is somewhat unique as well, hinting at being more than a warehouse and that what’s inside as being more than a commodity. It has the flexibility to be set to ranges that can accommodate most requirements in the sector.”
The facility was designed in direct response to customer demand for advanced seismic protection, sustainability, and state-of-the-art climate and humidity control. This combination is especially important for a broad range of organisations and users including:
- Museums and galleries: Stable temperature and humidity are essential for preserving paintings, sculptures, textiles, and mixed-media works.
- Iwi organisations: Taonga require culturally informed, environmentally stable conditions to ensure their long-term care.
- Archives and libraries: Paper, film, and photographic materials are highly sensitive to moisture and temperature fluctuations.
- Orchestras and music schools: Wooden instruments, percussion, and historical pieces need controlled environments to prevent damage.
- Universities and research institutions: Scientific collections, teaching archives, and rotating exhibitions benefit from professional-grade storage solutions.
- Private collectors: Increasingly, collectors seek secure, climate-controlled storage rather than relying on domestic environments.
The building has been designed to support the kinds of environmental stability that cultural organisations routinely require and that many existing storage options in the region struggle to provide.
The warehouse is maintained at a stable temperature of 14°C, with a tolerance of ±2 degrees, and a relative humidity of 50%, with a margin of ±5%. The climate‑control system has full redundancy, meaning the entire setup can continue operating even if one component fails. Air handling units use two stages of filtration, a G4 pre‑filter and a finer F8 filter, to protect the environment inside the space. Because the system operates on a closed‑loop design, it brings in only the minimal amount of outside air required for safe operation. The air‑handling units move approximately 9,000 litres of air per second across both supply and return, and the system is designed solely to maintain precise environmental conditions for the stored collections, rather than to improve indoor air quality for people.
With completion set for August, Crown is beginning outreach now, welcoming enquiries from potential long‑term clients, allowing them to secure space before the facility opens. Early engagement offers several advantages, including the guaranteed allocation of space, particularly for institutions with large or irregularly sized collections; time to plan relocations, which often involve conservation checks, packing, transport logistics, and internal approvals; customisation opportunities, such as tailored racking, shelving, or room configurations and integration with existing Crown services, including transport, installation, and collection management.
Hulme says “having an established Fine Art brand in other countries around the world and having a business in New Zealand that has carried out many specialist projects, libraries and museum migrations etc, we believed opening a Fine Art business would be adjacent to what we already do and by bringing in an expert like Chris Streeter as General Manager, the connection would be complete.”
Archivist Dr Marianne Schultz can see the advantages. “As someone who has worked with organizations and individual artists on the cataloguing and preservation of archives,” she says, “I know the vital importance of clean, dry and accessible storage facilities for the unique and irreplaceable artefacts and ephemera artists produce in the course of a career. Having dealt with basement floods, unexpected moves, downsizing and death, having a secure space for these taonga is essential for the preservation of our cultural history.”
The broader context is also worth noting. Wellington’s cultural sector has faced ongoing pressure on storage space, with many institutions managing collections across multiple sites or relying on facilities not originally designed for long‑term preservation. A purpose‑built, climate‑controlled, sustainably designed building is likely to attract significant interest.
Crown Worldwide Group has long operated in the logistics, relocation, and specialist storage sectors, and its New Zealand arm holds an EcoVadis Gold rating for sustainability. The launch of Crown Fine Art in Aotearoa in 2025 brought the company’s international fine‑art handling expertise into the local market, aligning with global standards for packing, transport, and storage.
The Porirua facility represents the next step in that evolution: a physical hub that can support the full lifecycle of collection care, from movement to long‑term preservation.
“Diversification, storage and property, are key priorities of Crown's global strategy, so we have been actively seeking new opportunities that align," says Hulme. “First, we have to identify where there’s a need, we saw a need in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museum sector, with the well-publicised lack of adequate storage space availability, certainly of a grade that meet the requirements for storing the nation's taonga.”
As the opening date approaches, cultural and collecting organisations may want to assess a few things. Are existing storage spaces meeting conservation standards? Will current facilities cope with projected acquisitions or donations? How resilient are current storage sites to seismic events, power outages, or climate‑related disruptions? Would consolidating multiple storage sites reduce costs or improve oversight? Does the organisation have a strategy for the next decade of collection care?
Crown’s facility will not be the right fit for every organisation, but for those seeking high‑spec, environmentally responsible storage, it represents a rare opportunity to secure space in a purpose‑built building before demand peaks.
As the Porirua build enters its final months, the cultural sector will be watching closely. Purpose‑built storage is not glamorous, but it is foundational – the quiet infrastructure that allows exhibitions to flourish, research to continue, and heritage to endure.
“During due diligence,” says Hulme, “comments were also made that more exhibitions of New Zealand art and taonga would take place if New Zealand had the supply chain to support it, at home and overseas, there are few companies in this space in New Zealand so the comments were Crown would be welcomed to support customers and the existing supply chain and if a facility was built to the standards we’re building, it would be a unique option to the sector in Wellington, if not nationally.”
With Crown Fine Art now established in New Zealand and a major new facility about to open, the region’s museums, galleries, iwi organisations, archives, orchestras, universities, and private collectors have a chance to rethink how they protect the objects that matter most.
To enquire about booking space in the new facility, you can fill out the form here.
This article was created in partnership with Crown Fine Art NZ.
