Grace and daring celebrated at 2011 NZ Architecture Awards

Residential design has always been a strength of New Zealand architecture, so it is no surprise that eight new dwellings – five new houses, two baches and an apartment – are among the 24 projects acknowledged in the New Zealand Architecture Awards, the country’s premier architecture competition. However, the convenor of the 2011 awards jury, Wellington architect Hugh Tennent, says it was also a good year for larger-scale architecture.

“We were particularly impressed with some brilliant public and commercial buildings,” Mr Tennent says. “The Birkenhead Library and Community Centre, for example, is a terrific community asset, St Kentigern School’s Jubilee Sports Centre is a very cleverly sited building, and the alteration of Wellington’s City Gallery is a wonderful adaptation of a heritage building.”

Mr Tennent and his fellow judges, Auckland architects Marshall Cook and Daniel Marshall and Sydney architect Camilla Block, were also taken with the very different charms of three commercial projects – the Auckland Grace and daring celebrated at 2011 NZ Architecture Awards Heliport at Onehunga, the Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre and the tower at 21 Queen Street, Auckland. “In each of these projects, a New Zealand-scale budget did not handicap a high-quality result,” Mr Tennent says. “The architects have worked very hard not just to meet the brief, but to rise above programmatic requirements.”

Auckland Heliport

A sense of transcendence is literally apparent at the Auckland Heliport which the awards jury describes as “a shed as elegant as the machines it houses”. Sited on a former landfill site between the banks of the Manukau Harbour and a railway container terminal, the heliport is a lightweight steel, openplan structure comprising storage space for up to 15 helicopters, a maintenance area, control tower, offices, passenger lounge and parking for clients’ vehicles.

Architect Bodie Maxcey says his client wanted a building that was more than just a functional facility. “I’ve tried to design a building that celebrates flight,” Mr Maxcey says. “I decided to make a virtue out of the operational requirements of the building. In particular, I wanted to bring natural light into work spaces, and allow views from and into the building.”

Because heliport staff must observe the landing apron and monitor the loading and fuelling of the helicopters, Mr Maxcey designed one side of the building as a continuous bank of sliding wall panels, clad in glass and translucent polycarbonate sheeting. “At night this translucent wall becomes a kinetic lantern, casting a welcoming light to approaching helicopters,” he explains.

Glowworm Caves

Vaulting ambition is evident too at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre designed by Wellington practice Architecture Workshop. A canopy of inflated ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (EFTE) air pillows tethered to a woven laminated timber ‘grid shell’ stretches over the structure.

Architecture Workshop director Chris Kelly says the canopy is aligned with the curve of the Waitomo stream to reinforce the project’s generating idea – “a simple lightweight ‘sky shell’ that counterpoints the subterranean cave space”.

The awards jury were impressed. “This is a project of great daring, embodying the vision of the client, demonstrating the skill of the architect and benefitting from a close collaboration with the engineer,” they say. “The building has a poetic quality that sustains multiple readings – as a hinaki, or eel trap, for example, or cave of light.”

21 Queen Street

The third winner of an award in the commercial category also won an award in the sustainable architecture category. At 21 Queen Street, opposite the old Central Post Office (now Britomart Station), architects Peddle Thorp Aitken have achieved what the awards jury describe as “a Cinderella-like transformation” of a tired 1970s office building into “a graceful tower