It's just a short skip across the road from the current Archives New Zealand building to one of the largest building sites in the capital, one that will eventually house some of our most valued archives.
Despite walking past and catching glimpses on a daily basis, Archives New Zealand manager Louise McCrone is visiting the site of their new building for the first time.
"The opportunity to build a technical space, to design a technical space for our work is once in a lifetime for most archivists, so we are making the most of it."
She says it's "super exciting" to see the progress that's been made since the shovels hit the ground in February 2022.
It's one of the largest and most complex projects LT McGuinness have taken on, says the site project manager, Ben Whaanga.
"Probably the most complicated and technical job we've encountered," he says.
"Piling that's never been done before, that was an unknown. We're talking piles that are 2.1m in diameter and 55m deep, so we're talking over 200 cubic metres of concrete going into the ground to support one pile. That scale was off the chain."
And it's not just the piles that are super-sized on site, with the base isolator bearings, which help displace weight in an earthquake, among the largest of their kind in the world.
"They're enormous," says Aurecon's lead engineer Tessa Beetham.
They had to be shipped one to a container from the US, and she thinks they're the largest bearings in the country.
"We were really testing the limits of their testing rigs, when they tested them in the US."
These isolators crucial in protecting some valuable pieces of Aotearoa's history, as well as the people who will use the space.
The building will be eight stories tall when finished, but when you factor in the archival storage and everything else in the building, it will have the mass equal to a thirty-story office block, which is why these bearings are so crucial.
Beetham says "they will displace by up to 1.6m, in a very large earthquake, but they also prevent the large displacements and accelerations from propagating up through the building. So what it means is we're protecting the contents, protecting the building. And after a really large event, we could expect the building to still be operational that people will continue to be able to work there."
While Whaanga and his team have never had to install bearings of this size before, he says they haven't been too tricky to install.
"You're talking 13,000 kilos, so finding the right equipment to lift these into place is the trickiest part of it all."
All the while, Whaanga says the significance of the project isn't lost on those on the coalface.
"It's a building of national significance and it means not a lot just to the team here but the wider country, so 100% it's always in the backs of our minds."
The building is set to be open to the public by mid-2026.
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