Visionary Architecture Awards Winners Announced

Wednesday 18 November

Visionary Architecture Awards Winners Announced

The winners of the Visionary Architecture Awards, held by the Auckland Architecture Association (AAA), were announced at an awards evening at the Auckland Art Gallery last night, Tuesday 17 November.

Architectural industry experts Rewi Thompson, Dean Mackenzie, Lynda Simmons and Chris Darby judged the premier awards for unbuilt architecture.

The Visionary Architecture Awards (previously the Unbuilt Architecture Awards) are widely renowned with well over 100 entries each year from leading architectural practices and students.

The awards recognise and promote unrestrained conceptual process and thinking on theoretical or not-yet-realised architectural projects.

The categories for 2015 were –

Visionary Architecture Award - Conceptual

Winner: Zee Shake Lee, for “Moving Grounds: Irrupting Three Kings Inverted Volcanoes”

The Conceptual category was open to New Zealand practicing architects, architectural graduates and related architectural professionals. Entries are conceptual in nature however must deal with an aspect of the built environment. The entry does not need to be the result of a “real world” commission.

Judges comment: “This project offered a highly abstract, experiential architectural and almost sculptural poetry to a highly complex and topical site in Auckland. Located in the quarry created by the mining of Three Kings - and currently scheduled to be refilled with medium density housing - the project employs five architectural propositions to explore the spatial potential of an extraordinary site and its geology. Each proposition, or architectural intervention, interrogates the notion of inhabitation in an eccentric and manufactured landscape and asks questions of our relationship with the urban landscape.”

Visionary Architecture Award - Student

Winner: Robert Pak, for “Post Civic”

This category was open to students currently enrolled at a New Zealand educational institution. Entries must deal with an aspect of the built environment.

Judges comment: “This project is visionary, believable and achievable. The idea of re-generating or re-energising historic parts of Auckland is not new, but important. Great cities of the world are built on good architecture, people and their landscape. This project recreates and reconnects the Waitemata to the historic train station and in doing so, celebrates and reinforces our civic heart. The bold cultural gesture in part reunites the forgotten Waipapa stream with the sea. In this way, whether it be the stream or the sea, the reconnection acts as a living vein that pumps, resuscitating new life and energy, to revitalise and invigorate a significant part of Auckland's early heritage, in a new and exciting way. Interventions like this provide a wealth of variety and possibilities, where canoes, people and architecture buzz in a celebratory dance that weaves a richly woven tapestry of everyday life.”

Visionary Architecture Award – Work in Progress

Winner: None awarded

The Work in Progress category was open to New Zealand practicing architects, architectural graduates and related professionals. Entries must be concept or preliminary design proposals for “real world” projects.

Bill McKay, author and lecturer at the University of Auckland School of Architecture, and committee member of the AAA, says: "The AAA Visionary Architecture Awards, which focus on unbuilt architecture, has been running for well over three decades. It is the place where we see the visions of architecture students, the ideas of young up-and-coming architects and the unbuilt schemes of architectural practices. It is the most exciting architecture and building awards in the country – other awards look back at what has happened, but it’s the Visionary Architecture Awards where we can first glimpse what will be happening in the years ahead.”

About the AAA

The Auckland Architecture Association (AAA) is a public interface for architecture and an advocate for high quality design in Auckland. It is a voluntary association that has been serving Auckland’s built environment since 1965. Members include practicing architects, university students, designers, engineers and members of the general public who have an interest in architecture.

The association also acts as a lobby group, engaging with the council on major planning and design changes in Auckland.

About the judges

Rewi Thompson is a distinguished Maori architect of Ngati Porou and Ngati Raukawa decent and a design tutor at the University of Auckland. Rewi’s mission is to serve the community with a focus on the cultural, sea and landscape. Through his heritage he brings a sensitivity and a holistic approach to architecture – particularly relating to cultural, community and environmental design. He seeks to inspire through design and reflect the unique qualities and authenticity of the culture and natural environment of Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Along with Hamish Monk, Dean Mackenzie is a partner at Monk Mackenzie Architects (MMA). MMA works across a range of project types including cultural, commercial projects and high-density residential projects as well as complex infrastructural projects – both in New Zealand and Asia. Prior to setting up MMA, Dean worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) in New York.

Lynda Simmons is a Registered Architect and Fellow of the NZIA, with 28 years of architectural practice experience. Lynda has a research MArch from the University of Auckland in the field of New Zealand architectural history, 1960s-70s. She has worked in New York, Vancouver and London and currently runs her own practice. She has acted as juror for, and been recipient of, several architectural awards and programmes. In 2011 Lynda co-founded the research and advocacy group Architecture+Women NZ and has an ongoing passion for research and community support in the area of gender and architecture.

Coming from a background of community and environmental advocacy as well as property development, Chris Darby has been a member of local government since 2004, As council’s Urban Design Champion and Deputy Chairperson of the Infrastructure and Auckland Development Committees, Chris brings his insight and passion for creating quality built environments while protecting our natural assets to the council table. He is passionate about public transport and its role in creating quality people-centred environments.

ENDS

© Scoop Media