At Toitoi, Hastings Opera House, Atlas is recreating original fibrous plaster mouldings using the same casting techniques the trade was built on, matched profile for profile against the moulds we made for this building nearly a century ago.
Where original moulds survive, we cast directly from them. Where they don't, we reverse-engineer profiles from what remains and recreate them by hand, the same way Atlas has approached restoration work since Ernie Boyle moved the company to Hastings after the 1931 earthquake.
Atlas created many of the original mouldings for the Hastings Opera House, and some of those original moulds still exist in our workshop today. As part of the venue's earthquake-strengthening redevelopment, we're casting from them where we can and recreating what's been lost using traditional techniques. The result is a close finish where the original heritage is indistinguishable from new.
The auditorium's central dome carries the room: a deep coffer in fibrous plaster, ringed with ornamental moulding and framed against the painted ceiling around it. Every run of moulding here was cast and fixed by hand, and every repair has to disappear into work that's been looked at from the stalls for the better part of a century.
“Some of the original moulds are still in our workshop, and we're casting straight from patterns Atlas made for this building the first time round.”
Toitoi's redevelopment isn't only about preserving what's original. It's added contemporary event spaces alongside the heritage auditorium. Here the brief flips: instead of matching a century-old profile, Atlas works to a completely different vocabulary, while staying true to the same trade and the same standard of craft.
Toitoi is our most extensively documented restoration project to date. Atlas has undertaken heritage and restoration work on other buildings across Hawke's Bay. Get in touch to discuss a specific project, or for examples beyond what's shown here.
