Top architecture awards announced: Diverse range of new Auckland buildings win

Focus Live: NZIA Awards country's Best Architecture. Video / Leon Menzies

Two buildings in the rapidly-emerging Wynyard Quarter, a new AUT block, a Great Barrier Island house and stylish Takapuna offices were Auckland winners of New Zealand's top architecture awards last night.

Nineteen buildings won prizes from the NZ Institute of Architects, announced in Queenstown.

Warren and Mahoney Architects won a commercial award for 12 Madden St, the latest "and most highly specced office building in the Wynyard Quarter, part of the Grid AKL innovation hub."

12 Madden St, Wynyard Quarter. Photo / Simon Devitt

Architectus won a multi-unit housing award for the nearby Wynyard Central East 2, a "bold and confident" apartment building, complex, enhancing the public realm of the neighbourhood."

Jasmax scooped the education category for Ngā Wai Hono, AUT School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences Building which the judges said gave the institution a legible presence on Symonds St.

AUT's new building. Photo / Jason Mann

"This complex building expresses AUT's determination to maximise the potential of a tight and convoluted urban site by successfully combining insertion with integration," said the judging panel headed by Malcolm Walker.

Pinwheel House, Great Barrier Island. Photo / Jackie Meiring

On Great Barrier Island, architecture + won for the "Pinwheel House" where Stuart Gardyne was praised for "imaginative planning and excellent fabrication, a beguiling house that responds effectively to local climate and weather conditions and the requirements of the client."

The twisting staircase in B:Hive, Smales Farm. Photo / John Gollings

Australian architects BVN, working with the local Jasmax, won the interior award for the stylish B:Hive office block at Smales Farm Takapuna, with its brightly coloured internal stairway "sculptural, at the heart of the building, works well as a focal point and a social fulcrum, twisting its way up through the light-bathed atrium".

Ellen Melville Cenre. Photo / Mark Smith

The Ellen Melville Centre and Freyberg Place won planning and urban design awards for Stevens Lawson Architects, Isthmus Group and artist John Reynolds. The listed historic centre, designed by Tibor Donnor in the early 1960s, was renovated and judges praised how the square and building now come together "as a unified composition."

Christchurch's new public library. Photo / Adam Mork

Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects won an award for the new Christchurch central library, Tūranga, described as an anchor project for the city post-earthquakes, "a building of distinction that admirably fulfils its function as Christchurch's main library and also with its strong but not overbearing presence, makes a very important contribution to the shaping of the square and the signifying of the public realm of the central city."

Inside the new library, Christchurch. Photo / Adam Mork

Lakeside Soldiers Memorial Hall by Architecture Workshop won a public architecture award, serving a community and wider district at the southern end of the Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere.

Peter Fehl of Auckland University. Photo / Greg Bowker

Peter Fehl, Auckland University's property services director for 15 years, won a presidents award, along with Tony Watkins who is an architect, builder, teacher, writer and environmentalist.

Three people won distinguished fellow awards: Graeme Scott of Auckland practice ASC Architects, Anne Salmond of Wanaka and John Sutherland, a director of the forerunner of Jasmax and Unitec architecture school founding head.

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