Design in the limelight at industry awards

AUT's Sir Paul Reeves Building.

AUT's Sir Paul Reeves Building, designed by Jasmax architect Richard Harris, won the top Designers Institute award in the spatial category at the Best Design Awards last night.

Britomart's retailing area The Pavilions and its dessert bar Milse, Air New Zealand Koru Lounge in Christchurch and the Fox St offices of RCP also won awards at a dinner at the Viaduct Events Centre last night.

Best awards were also made for product, graphic and interactive categories.

Harris won for creating the new AUT building which judges said was an environment that set a benchmark for its genre, from lectures to tutorials and study spaces to social areas.

The Pavilions by Nat Cheshire of Cheshire Architects won for being a daring departure from the retailing norm, transforming a long-dormant area into a desirable destination with distinctive outdoor lighting.

Milse, also by Cheshire, was praised as having a cave-like intensity with hidden corners and the illusion of depth to tempt discovery.

The Koru Lounge in Christchurch's domestic terminal by Alasdair Hood of Jasmax was designed as an evolution of the bach concept but created in a space with an almost cathedral-like quality because of a 6m stud and sweeping Southern Alps views.

Commercial offices in Shanghai, China, also won a spatial award. The design for Atelier Subalpino's offices by Matthew Waterfall of Waterfall Gunns Lowe Architects in Auckland was praised for creating a sparse aesthetic with rich layers of transparent materials, juxtaposed against heritage elements of an abandoned warehouse.

In other categories, the Les Mills SmartStep by Christchurch's studio 4ormfunction won for reinventing the standard gym step exercise equipment by stopping slippage with a multi-directional top surface designed to improve grip, a deck that locks into position and a device that stacks neatly in storage.

Fisher & Paykel won for its Simplus face mask, designed for patients undergoing continuous positive airway pressure therapy. The judges said minimalistic headgear helped patients focus more on their therapy by providing stability and comfort.

"Patient feedback was overwhelmingly positive with 89.6 per cent of patients in their clinical trial reporting that they preferred to use the Simplus over their current mask," the judges said.

Jamie McLellan and Andy Jacobs' lightweight luxury kayak design was inspired by the super yacht. The kayak was built in carbon fibre by America's Cup boat builders in New Zealand. The design makes the kayak highly responsive and effortlessly driven through the water and it has accessories including a magnetic drop-in seat pad held in by magnets embedded into the carbon hull, the judges said.