This is not a briefing. It is the beginning of a conversation between two people who have each spent their lives building things that didn’t exist before they built them. The room at 22 Durham Street is the next one.
The Night League built UNVRS for 15,000 people and 6,500 sqm. Hï Ibiza holds 5,500. The White Room holds 750 in 780 sqm. The ambition is the same. The technology standard is the same. The production intention is identical.
What changes is the ratio. Every person in that room gets the full force of an international touring production divided by 750 people instead of 5,000. That is not a smaller version of Hï. That is a fundamentally more intimate and more powerful experience than Hï can ever deliver. That is what Pak is being asked to produce.
Built in 1918 as the New Zealand Stock Exchange. It operated as Future Club. The infrastructure inside it is significantly more capable than any club in New Zealand. Someone spent serious production money on this building before we arrived. We are not starting from scratch. We are inheriting an infrastructure and transforming it.
The artist never touches the public entrance on Durham Street. Complete separation from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave. This is a world-class venue requirement and it is already built into the existing architecture of the building.
The green room already has the glass window. The artist can stand in that room, look through the glass at the dancefloor filling up, and choose their moment. That is not a feature we are building. It is a feature the building already has. John Digweed’s manager will ask about this before any other rider conversation happens.
The production infrastructure Pak specifies is not used for events only. Four engines run simultaneously. The room generates revenue before a single ticket is sold. This is what makes the capital case viable and what makes the production investment permanent rather than amortised across twelve nights a year.
These are not conclusions. They are the questions that require his eyes, his ears, and thirty years of knowing what a room needs to become. We have walked the building. He will see things we have not seen. That is the conversation.
INXS. Talking Heads. Simple Minds. U2. Elton John. The 2015 Cricket World Cup Opening. Auckland Festival. The Lions Tour Fan Zone. The Aotearoa Music Awards. Pacifica the Musical at The Civic — a twenty-year creative vision he saw through to the stage in the country’s greatest theatre.
Pak is not a technician. He is a producer with a creative soul who also understands the technical requirements of world-class production at every scale from 750 to 75,000 people. That combination is rare. That is the combination The White Room needs.
The documentary that follows this building into every new market — Pak is in it from day one. His name on the production is the answer to every question a touring artist’s manager asks before the booking conversation begins. This is an invitation to be part of something that has never existed in this country.
“The room is ready to become
what it was always capable of being.
We need Pak to help us do that right.”