From a record-breaking pool of 1178 initial entries for this year's Best Design Awards, Te Puia, in collaboration with Air New Zealand, DNA, and Designworks, has scooped the supreme award.
The Best Design Awards are organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand and recognise the strongest work produced in nine categories - spatial, product, graphic, moving image, interactive, best effect, public good, Nga Aho Award, which showcases multi-cultural design collaboration, and the freshly introduced user experience category.
Designers Institute chief executive Cathy Veninga said the standard this year was higher than ever.
"Every year it gets stronger and we have more new studios entering.
"It's become so widely respected that although we don't promote the awards internationally, this year we had interest from as far afield as Turkey and Cyprus and we had strong entries from China and Japan, one of which won a Gold award."