The Victoria Square Apartments are situated next to Victoria Park in central Christchurch, on a very tight site with high tourist and pedestrian use, and within 5m of the famous heritage tram, which passes the site at 12-minute intervals.

Labelled as Christchurch's most prestigious apartment development in over two decades, Victoria Apartments has 13 levels and 17 individual apartments built using high quality materials and an equally high standard of finish.

The building has a double envelope with GRC preformed panels, ventclad system and seismic windows on the exterior. The building was clad in one of the largest seismically restrained lightweight Hebel walls. The exterior consisted of four different types of cladding, which required marrying together to provide a sound, waterproof shell. A large GRC dome completes the building providing an impressive feature from both outside and inside.

During construction the building's central location provided challenges with constant pedestrian flow, and the famous Christchurch heritage tram, which passed the site at 12-minute intervals.

The key to the success of this project was Hawkins maintaining a very close relationship and open communication will all the stakeholders. Sales of many of the apartments during the construction period gave the new owners the opportunity to have input into the finishes of their new apartment; this contributed to the project reaching over 1,000 architect's directions, with a range of these having 50-60 individual items to address. This included the inclusion of two whole extra apartments to provide the building with 17 unique apartments requiring individual attention to detail.

Further variations included a $4.5m Podium Car park that was completed within a 6-month timeframe.

Hawkins close partnership with the client, architects, consultants and subcontractors achieved an outstanding product that has met all of the client's and purchasers' requirements.