Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2025 i Architecture NZ

In a coup for Australian practice fjcstudio, its architects made history in Singapore late last year by becoming the first practice to take out the World Architecture Festival ‘World Building of the Year’ twice – the first time with New Zealand’s very own Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, as FJMT in association with Archimedia, in 2013. The 2024 winning project is the Darlington Public School in Sydney (01–03), in what the jury (made up of Mario Cucinella, Emre Arolat, Ian Ritchie and Sonali Rastogi) described as a poetic project: “a building in which topography and landscape, inside and outside, form and materials flow seamlessly in an unexpectedly delightful way”. The jury went on to say the project is “an inspirational proposition about the acknowledgement and reconciliation of historic difference…

The A+W NZ Tātuhi Drawing Architecture: Sarah Treadwell Archive is a slow-building digital storehouse that gathers together architectural drawings that reveal their ‘drawing thinking’ in the pursuit of architecture, rather than being architectural representation or documentation. Each drawing selected for the archive ia a stand-alone piece from the architectural project developed by its creator in the course of the thesis year. This year’s selection is Tracing Pōneke’s Creative Communities (2024) by Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington student Tom Arbuckle. The 5000x800mm ink, charcoal, pencil and acetone transfer artwork formed part of Arbuckle’s thesis ‘Artistic Activism!’, supervised by Jan Smitheram. In making the choice, the 2024/25 selection team of Sarah Treadwell, Ashleigh Smith, Marian Macken, Karamia Müller, Simon Twose, Sharon Jansen and Lynda Simmons commented: “The drawing here seems…

THE ARRIVAL OF TUKUTUKU ESTABLISHES a new heart for AUT’s campus on Auckland’s North Shore and marks the completion of a series of major transformational projects across the university’s three main campuses. Preceded by the Sir Paul Reeves Building at the city campus, and the Mana Hauora building in South Auckland, Tukutuku is not a standalone statement building. Rather, it represents a continuum of sustained research into low-carbon building practices, a long-term view towards master-planning and capital expenditure, and the social possibilities of a distributed campus model. The result is a building that can be evaluated for its architectural qualities in the here and now, set against the ongoing evolution of the North Campus and AUT’s stated aim of being a university “for the changing world”. To find an appropriate…

THE LIFT PROMISED A FREE ride, halfway up inside the castle, we were told. Well, not really free, but a modest fee when weighed against the rising plane of uneven cobblestones lifting away to the right that was our only alternative. Our guide had warned of a long and arduous climb before reaching the entry above. Shimmering heat disturbances in the air from the mid-morning sun were a further disincentive to the overland schlep. My companion, who had previously exhibited all the energy of a hyperactive party-goer, spoke of a back suffering the consequences of a long tour and opted to join me in the mechanised option. And so we queued, joining a long line of supplicants snaking through the serried columns to the promised elevator. The queue did not move.…

Josh Sanoria of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s Te Kura Waihanga School of Architecture was the winner of the 2024 Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects Resene Student Design Awards with his work ‘Queeriosities of Space’. The judges were impressed with how the final-year MArch student’s “visually exuberant and powerful” project demonstrated the ways in which architecture can break down barriers to inclusivity. “Colour is beautifully and consistently expressed throughout this project, which invites escapism and exploration in a world that is rarely represented in architecture. The metaphor of the closet is explored as both a place of repression and a place of safety, pushing the boundaries of this space. A postmodern architectural aesthetic is applied to two buildings, one in the Philippines and one in…

This year’s recipient of the F. Gordon Wilson Fellowship for Public Housing is Patrick Kelly, a New Zealand architect working in Naarm Melbourne, Australia. Kelly plans to undertake research into Bluefield Housing, an urban infill housing model developed by Australian architectural academic Damian Madigan, to see how it might transform existing state-housing stock in Aotearoa. Kelly will research the ways in which additional one-and two-bedroomed homes can be added to existing state-owned sections in cities around the country. The additional dwellings will be designed according to the constraints of the sites and placed around shared gardens and other communal facilities, in order to achieve a greater quantity of smaller homes for social housing, without subdividing land. The fellowship is designed to generate architectural research into Aotearoa’s unmet housing needs and…

In late 2020, the Westlight Apartments in Glen Eden were finished. The building complex comprises of two blocks, one of 10, the other of 11 storeys high, which sit on a shared parking garage of three levels. The podium that is thus created offers a communal ‘green’ space. Brand new, they are nevertheless situated at an historically significant location: directly between Waikumete Cemetery and the train line to Swanson (that used to continue further out to Helensville). The cemetery, which opened in 1886 on land of Kawerau ā Maki, became New Zealand’s largest cemetery. Waikumete literally means “Water of the Wooden Bowl”. Curiously, the location of the cemetery was determined by the train station – and not the other way around.1 Apart from the location, the Westlight Apartments fascinate for…

Practice in Profile Supported by Resene the pait the professionals use GETTING TOGETHER Before ahha became a practice, what drew us together was a strong sense of a shared moral compass and, we’re sure, similar to many others in the small architecture community, an ability to have a lot of fun. The gravitational nexus was in Tāmaki Makaurau, where we all crossed paths studying and working together. Between us, we had studied at Unitec, University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, Otago Polytechnic and Ara Institute of Canterbury, so we drew on an educational journey that crossed the motu. Similarly, our work experiences crossed small and larger practices, with work on diverse typologies up and down Aotearoa. In this time of study and early industry work, there is much time…

SITE PLAN 1 DRIVEWAY 2 COURTYARD 3 LINE OF SETBACK 4 FRONT LAWN 5 FRONT GARDEN (EXISTING) 6 PREVIOUS HOUSE (DASHED LINE) GREATER LOVE HATH NO ARCHITECT’S parents than to commission a house from their child. Parental patronage produced some of the 20th century’s most admired houses. The Swiss family Jeanneret funded, and adapted their lives to, son Charles-Édouard’s 1923 exercise in Existenzminimum, the Villa Le Lac on Lake Geneva, having a decade earlier procured from young Corb the Maison Blanche at La Chaux-de-Fonds. A generation later, on Sydney’s leafy North Shore, Rose Seidler commissioned her son Harry to design the house named for her and now enshrined as a modernist masterpiece. In 1960s’ Philadelphia, only-child Robert Venturi designed a house for his mother that realised many of the postmodernist…

This year’s Interior Awards jury brings experience at all levels and across all disciplines to the table, with expertise in the commercial, education, civic, residential and hospitality sectors. As the Interior Sector Lead at Architectus Aotearoa, Céili Murphy combines creativity, strategic thinking and a commitment to sustainability to design spaces that uplift and inspire. While collaborating across diverse typologies, she is particularly passionate about workplace design, believing healthy, well-designed environments are vital to productivity and well-being. Originally from Nelson, Céili completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Arts at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts and the University of Melbourne respectively before transitioning to interior architecture 15 years ago. Céili is also active in mentoring and guest lecturing, fostering a supportive and diverse design community.…

KNZM, FRSNZ, FNZIA 15 September 1931 – 31 August 2024 Ian Lochhead pays tribute to this country’s most celebrated acoustician and highly respected architect, engineer and physicist. In an article coinciding with the May 2024 launch of Maurice and I, a documentary film on the partnership of Sir Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney and the saving of the Christchurch Town Hall, Sir Harold Marshall is described as the film’s “break-out star”. Marshall, who died on 31 August 2024, two weeks short of his 93rd birthday, played a role in the success of the building every bit as critical as that of its architects. His theory of lateral sound reflection, developed in conjunction with the project, initiated a paradigm shift in the acoustics of concert hall design around the world. Marshall,…

Anthony Brand encourages a group of third-year architectural students to seek out AI tools that might help them design more efficiently, effectively and innovatively. While the expedition uncovered the unusual, unconventional and often unconvincing, a truly intelligent AI remains (currently) elusive. IN APRIL THIS YEAR, ARCHITECT, AUTHOR and educator Neil Leach arrived in Auckland for the beginning of an ambitious world tour (33 cities in nine weeks), promoting his most recent book, Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction to AI for Architects. Leach presented to a packed house (and livestream) at Warren and Mahoney’s Auckland offices, where he shared his perspective on the ways in which the rapid advancement of AI could radically transform and possibly render obsolete the traditional role of the architect. The presentation was…

SITE PLAN 1 TE KAHA 2 COMMERCIAL BAY 3 JARDEN HOUSE 4 BRITOMART TRANSPORT CENTRE 5 PWC TOWER 6 HSBC TOWER 7 AON CENTRE 8 FERRY BUILDING 9 FERRY TERMINAL A GENERATION (OR TWO!) WON’T KNOW this building as the old Air New Zealand tower of the 1970s. It was originally part of a modernist comprehensive development at the end of Queen Street where city meets sea, seen as a key site for some city-directed place-making. Evolving plans saw a shuffling around of typically modernist urban elements, such as low-rise tower, broad central mall, open plaza and high-rise ‘vertical feature’ tower. This high-rise was ominously labelled in Orwellian-speak as ‘Office Block 1’ and it ended up in the worst possible place on the site. Public scrutiny, led by Auckland’s Architectural…

I’M INCREASINGLY INTERESTED IN HOW buildings are done these days – the way they are made rather than the way they look. Of course, their appearance, how they are to live in and so on are still crucially important but we live in times where we need to innovate. The old ways of doing things just aren’t serving the needs of many in society any more. Slow, expensive, often wasteful, sometimes leaky, increasingly unsustainable, vulnerable to climate change – the list goes on and we haven’t even touched on the human, family, social and cultural diversity of these days. It is complicated, isn’t it? Well, your construction choices are getting more complicated as well. Many of us have seen this building going up in Auckland’s Point Chevalier. It’s on a…