AUT City Campus (Sir Paul Reeves Building)

About this place

The Sir Paul Reeves Building is the principal conference and events building on AUT's City Campus at 55 Wellesley Street East, Auckland CBD. It is marketed and managed by AUT Events, the university's commercial venue arm. The building (also referred to as the WG Building) is accessed from Gate 3 on Wellesley Street East and from 2 Governor Fitzroy Place.

The spaces

Function and meeting spaces are spread across four levels. The building's environmentally focused design gives flexible, open rooms with a high proportion of natural light. Spaces regularly used for events include:

• Conference Centre — listed at 250 theatre, 200 dining and 250 cocktail.
• Open Forum — listed at 250 theatre, 200 dining and 300 cocktail.
• Wave Room / Te Iringa function space — listed at 180 theatre, 150 dining and 185 cocktail.

The adjacent WZ Building, Ngā Wai Hono, provides further light-filled space used for cocktail receptions and exhibitions, which allows a conference in the Sir Paul Reeves Building to run alongside a separate catering or exhibition area.

Beyond this building, AUT Events lists more than 600 bookable spaces across its Auckland Central, North Shore and Manukau campuses, so overflow rooms, tiered lecture theatres and additional break-out space can be drawn on for larger programmes.

Event capability

AUT Events provides in-house event planning, audiovisual support and catering, with a stated emphasis on sustainable catering. The mix of a large plenary space, multiple break-out rooms on the same site and integrated AV suits multi-stream academic and professional conferences — the building has hosted national and international conferences.

The City Campus location is a practical advantage for delegates: it sits at the top of the Auckland CBD near Symonds Street and Aotea Quarter, within walking distance of city hotels, and is well served by bus routes and rail via Britomart and the wider public transport network, which reduces reliance on parking in the central city.

Suitability for MICE

The Sir Paul Reeves Building is a genuine conference venue rather than a repurposed room: it handles plenaries of up to around 250, gala dining to 200, exhibition and poster space, and simultaneous break-out streams, with one supplier covering venue, AV and catering. It is well suited to association and academic conferences, seminars, symposia, graduations, awards evenings and corporate training in central Auckland. See more Auckland venues.