Public and commercial buildings the winners at 2011 Architecture Awards

These are challenging times for the construction industry, and therefore for the architecture profession, but this year’s Architecture Awards programme proves that while the recession might be restricting building activity, it isn’t handicapping architectural or construction quality.

MOTAT’s Aviation Display Hall received two Auckland Architecture Awards

The annual Architecture Awards are run by the eight branches of the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) and this year’s entries to date have shown that, especially in Auckland and Wellington, and particularly in the areas of commercial and public projects, this was a good year for ‘big building’ architecture.

MOTAT Aviation Display Hall

An Auckland building that received two Architecture Awards – for public architecture and sustainable architecture – is the MOTAT Aviation Display Hall, designed by Studio of Pacific Architecture. Sited on a landfill site in Pt Chevalier, this 3000 sq m building accommodates MOTAT’s collection of vintage aircraft, many of them unique.

The architects have designed what is essentially a vast wooden hangar, with a structure almost entirely fabricated from laminated veneer lumber (LVL). At 42 m internal width, the Aviation Display Hall reputedly has the largest clear span of any LVL structure in New Zealand.

The awards jury said the “immense exhibition facility” is “enlivened and enriched by the visual warmth of timber veneer linings which contrast beautifully with the sleek aircraft on display”.

Auckland Art Gallery

One of the most anticipated building openings in Auckland in the last decade was the September relaunch of the city’s Art Gallery. The gallery had been closed for three years while the original 1888 building was restored and strengthened and a new extension added.

These days, any public project receives considerable scrutiny, and the design for the new Auckland Art Gallery, by Richard Francis Jones of Sydney practice FJMT in association with local practice Archimedia, was no exception. A couple of objectors dragged the project before the Environment Court, from which it emerged substantially unchanged, but the build was delayed and that meant extra costs were incurred.

It has been worth the wait though, and even hard-toplease architectural critics have hailed the new Art Gallery, praising its series of pohutukawa-inspired kauri canopies and the dextrous handling of the relationship of the new addition to the existing building and with the neighbouring Albert Park.

The Art Gallery also received two awards in the 2011 Auckland Architecture Awards, in the heritage and public architecture categories, with the awards jury applauding the building’s “beautifully layered collection of spaces”.

Telecom Place

One of the winners in the commercial architecture category of the Auckland Architecture Awards is Telecom Place, a block-sized building on the western edge of the Auckland CBD, overlooking Victoria Park. This project began life as a speculative scheme incorporating four individual buildings, but when the developer secured Telecom as a tenant, and when Telecom decided to bring together four business units on the site, Architectus was able to recast the design as a single entity, effectively a large village of worker bees united by a large common atrium.

The architects were also keen to realise the urban design potential of the 5 Green Star-rated building, which now plays its part in the revival of what had become a ragged part of town. “The architects have not so much overcome the challenges of a sloping site as taken advantage of them,” the awards jury said.

Asteron Centre

City making, as well as client satisfying, was also the goal of Warren and Mahoney Architects when the practice designed Asteron Centre, a 15-storey building opposite the Wellington Railway Station, on the CBD frontier known as the capital’s ‘Northern Gateway’.

The corner site presented design challenges in terms of bulk and urban scale, the architects say. Their solution was to divide the building into two contrasting elements – one with a dark, louvre-clad façade, the other with a more delicate, white-glazed façade.

In giving the 5 Green Star building a Wellington Architecture Award in the commercial category, the awards jury commended the bifurcated strategy, saying it resulted in “a more elegant and humanely scaled architecture”.

Forsyth Barr Stadium

Dunedin may not build many large public buildings, but this year it produced a structure that was one of the stars of the Rugby World Cup. Forsyth Barr Stadium – the name to which the venue has reverted after bearing the World Cup clean-skin title of Otago Regional Stadium – boasts it is the world’s first fixed-roof stadium with a natural grass playing surface. More than that, the 30,000-seat (20,000 permanent and 10,000 fixed) multi-purpose stadium is acknowledged to be an intimate and atmospheric arena, as well as a comfortable one.

The design team of Jasmax, Richard Breslin and Populous did very well in steering the project through a complex process, the 2011 Southern Architecture Awards jury said. The result? “A wonderful place to watch a game – indeed, a great little stadium.” All winners of 2011 Architecture Awards can be viewed at www.nzia.co.nz/ awards.aspx