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Jasmax Awards Two $5000 Ivan Mercep Awards

MEDIA RELEASE

Thursday 10 Dec 2015

Jasmax Awards Two $5000 Ivan Mercep Awards

Celebrating innovation, personal growth and design excellence, Jasmax’s Ivan Mercep Award has been dually awarded to Architectural Graduate Arnika Blount and Marketing Communications Manager Sarah Rothwell.

The winners of the Award were announced on 4 December by Ivan’s son, National TV and Radio presenter, Simon Mercep at a special ceremony held at the Jasmax Auckland studio and streamed to Jasmax’s four offices.

An initiative for Jasmax employees, each winner of the Ivan Mercep Award receives $5,000 and a week of paid exploration time to pursue a personal development opportunity that will in return offer benefit back to the wider practice. Whilst the award was re-launched in 2015 after a 7 year hiatus, the announcement of two recipients of the Award is unprecedented.

The entries for the Ivan Mercep Award ranged from market and art pavilions, to a raucous cross-country charity race through India. The two winning submissions focused on overseas trips to learn from leaders in Arnika’s and Sarah’s respective fields of architecture and marketing communications.

Arnika’s ‘Rethinking Patterns’, will fund her attendance at the AA_Aarhus Visiting School Workshop, in Denmark. In conjunction with London’s Architectural Association, Aahaus School of Architecture hosts a summer workshop; an intense 10 days of workshops exploring computational tools in design and fabrication under different scales of architecture, through manipulations with geometry. A highly futuristic-focused initiative, the knowledge from which will place Arnika’s learning at the forefront of computational design and thinking in New Zealand.

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Sarah’s ‘How to Lead the Way in Architectural Marketing & Communications’ manifested from the perspective of a non-architecturally trained communicator in an architectural world. Quoting “to write about architecture, you need to truly understand architecture”, Sarah’s proposal looks to visit internationally-renowned communicators in the architectural and design industry; to understand how curation of thought-leading knowledge makes it from grey matter, to paper and into the world at large; not just to understand how to publish communication, but how it’s engaged with, and how it’s utilised to encourage conversation. Jasmax as a practice is growing at a steady rate, and so establishing how to put a conduit in place that both encourages and articulates the creativity in-house is paramount to promoting the innovation and design excellence, and projecting it to the outside world.

Jerome Buckwell, Jasmax Principal responsible for the reinstatement of the Ivan Mercep Award, commented “The quality of all the submissions was impressive, and as a result, the judging process was surprisingly emotional. Ivan was a humble designer and powerful educator within the practice, and the depth of quality of entries for his award, is reflective of the legacy he’s left behind. Every entrant took the challenge in a different direction – all of them with the degree that they balanced personal growth with the intent to share with others and educate – and have some fun doing it.”

Arnika and Sarah will take their respective trips in 2016.

ENDS

About Ivan Mercep:

Ivan Mercep was a co-founder of JASMaD in 1963, latterly to become Jasmax in 1989. Ivan Mercep was recognised publicly as a 'Living Legend' by the Mayor of Auckland City in 2007 and was an NZIA Gold Medallist in 2008, having dedicated his career and passion to architecture. He delivered many iconic projects including Te Papa Tongarewa and the University of Auckland’s Fale Pasifika. Ivan’s final building, Tuhoe Te Uru Tamatua building, saw him working on the project into his eighties, with him passing just one month after its official opening in 2014. In addition, Ivan is attributed by many as the driving force behind the revitalisation of Auckland’s thriving suburb, Ponsonby.

About the Ivan Mercep Award:

The Award was created in recognition of Ivan, a humble and genial architect, who kept working until his death in 2014, at the age of 83. He leaves a legacy not only in the buildings he designed, but in the work produced by the generations of architects that developed under his gracious mentorship. This award is designed to commemorate Ivan's dedication and commitment to the practice by retaining a focus on innovation, personal growth and design excellence.

About Jasmax:

Jasmax is one of New Zealand’s largest multi-disciplinary architecture and design practice, providing architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and urban design services. Now over 50 years in operation, our breadth and depth of experience is unique within New Zealand, having completed a vast range of high profile, award-winning complex projects in a range of sectors; from commercial and healthcare design, to community projects, and all-ages educational institutions. With a diverse mix of over 270 professionals, we draw on this expertise to facilitate a robust design process for the successful outcome of all of our projects. We work collaboratively with clients and stakeholders, drawing out their unique requirements, and with joint venture partners, to generate outcomes that are of genuine relevance, efficiency and clarity to New Zealand, and which integrate authentically sustainable design.


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