Majestic Centre Wellington | Commercial Plant Design

At the heart of Wellington's Majestic Centre, a previously underused atrium has been transformed into an immersive indoor forest that changes how people experience the building from the moment they arrive. Working alongside the Unispace Wellington team, GreenAir developed an installation of 40 individual gardens integrated across both sides of the two-level escalator atrium, a considered landscape that unfolds vertically through the building and reveals new perspectives as people move through it.

Rather than treating the planting as decoration, we conceived it as an integral part of the architecture: a living layer that softens the building's hard lines, introduces movement and creates a stronger sense of connection to place. The installation was recognised with the 2025 Interior Plantscape Award for Large Project Installation.

A Forest, Translated into Architecture

The planting takes its cues from the layered structure of a New Zealand forest. Three distinct layers, Canopy, Understory and Forest Floor, set the framework: mature trees form an overhead canopy, shrubs and smaller trees build density through the middle, and trailing groundcover species are planted en masse at ground level, grounded by bark, rocks and logs. Rather than repeating a single composition, each garden has its own character, and their staggered positioning means planting is revealed from new heights and angles as people ride the escalators, creating moments of discovery within an everyday journey.

The layered planting of Majestic Centre rising through the escalator atrium, tree-fern canopy above and denser shrubs and groundcover below, a New Zealand forest structure brought indoors

Designed to Evolve

The installation was never meant to be static. The palette deliberately combines mature specimens with juvenile plants, so the gardens grow and interconnect over time as trailing species extend across the bark and into the architectural framework. Native ferns and mature punga bring a distinctly New Zealand character, while rarer species offer moments of intrigue, creating a landscape that feels both locally grounded and quietly contemporary, and that gives regular occupants a reason to notice it again and again.

Contrasting foliage and colour in a Majestic Centre garden, the varied character GreenAir builds into each planted composition

Technology Beneath the Landscape

While the gardens read as natural and effortless, considerable engineering sits beneath them. Each of the 40 custom-fabricated aluminium planter boxes was developed to integrate with the existing joinery, with a concealed cavity below the growing medium housing the inlet pipes, solenoids, sensors and overflow outlets that let every garden run independently. An automated irrigation system waters each planter only when it needs it, drawing on recycled-material wicking cells and hidden reservoirs, while a bespoke growing medium balances moisture retention with the resilience to withstand technicians moving through the gardens during maintenance.

Overhead view of the staggered aluminium planter gardens along the Majestic Centre escalator atrium, part of GreenAir's 40-garden indoor forest with a native punga fern

2025

INTERIOR PLANTSCAPE AWARD

The Majestic Centre installation won the 2025 Interior Plantscape Award for Large Project Installation, recognising the scale, craft and technical ambition of its 40-garden indoor forest.