Media release – embargoed until 9pm, 9 October.

Awards for the architecture of the Canterbury rebuild

Twenty-one projects, ranging from airport facilities to public swimming pools and from houses to shops and school buildings, have been recognised in the annual awards celebrating the best of Canterbury architecture.

The 2013 Canterbury Architecture Awards, an official, peer-reviewed programme of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, were announced on Wednesday night at the Air Force Museum in Wigram.

The convenor of the Awards jury, Christchurch architect Perry Royal, said the number of projects entered into the Awards was significantly higher than in the past three years.

“It seems we’re seeing the first wave of the Christchurch rebuild,” Royal said, “and the good news from this year’s Canterbury Architecture Awards is that there is some excellent work being done by the region’s architects.”

Royal said his jury, which included architects Leo Van Veenendaal and Hamish Shaw, Te Maire Tau from the University of Canterbury’s Ngai Tahu Research Centre, and architectural graduate Jenny Babonnick, took a rigorous approach to judging the awards entries.

“I think my colleagues set the bar quite high,” Royal said. “That’s appropriate, because people in Christchurch, especially, want to believe that quality architecture will replace the buildings we have lost.”

Royal added that while the increased volume of commercial projects is heartening, heritage issues remain a big challenge in Christchurch.

“Heritage is struggling to get a look in,” he said. “Often it seems work on older buildings that have survived the earthquakes is focused on retention, rather than restoration. That’s understandable, because careful restoration is time-consuming and expensive, but it is important that our surviving architectural heritage gets the attention it deserves.”

Winners of 2013 Canterbury Architecture Awards

Two projects at Christchurch Airport received Canterbury Architecture Awards. The Air New Zealand Regional Lounge, designed by BVN Donovan Hill and Jasmax in association, was recognised in both the commercial and interior architecture categories. “Eminently suitable in scale and function” it is, the Awards jury said, “an excellent portal” to the city and other destinations in New Zealand, with a “delightfully creative interior that imparts a regional identity to the airport terminal”.

The Integrated Terminal Project at Christchurch International Airport, designed by Warren and Mahoney Architects and Hassell in association, won an Award in the commercial category. The jury said this complex construction project, achieved without interrupting the airport’s operation, is “a clear distillation of the circulation patterns and logistical requirements of large-volume air travel”.

Three significant community buildings, two of them public swimming pools, won Awards in the Public Architecture category. At the Selwyn Aquatic Centre, Warren and Mahoney Architects have taken “a very clear and direct approach to what is a very complex public facility”, and have designed a building that “addresses all of the fundamentals associated with passive energy utilisation”. The Selwyn Aquatic Centre received awards in both the Public Architecture and Sustainable Architecture categories.

The Caroline Bay Aquatic Centre, designed by Boon Goldsmith Bhaskar Brebner Team Architecture, was another recipient of a Public Architecture Award. The Awards jury praised the building’s uncluttered planning, the use of daylight, and an artful façade that presents “a sense of lightness and signifies the centre’s activity”.

Aranui Library, designed by Christchurch City council’s own architecture office, also won an Award in the Public Architecture category, as well as in the Sustainable Architecture category. “The library reflects its community and its ethnicity, invites that community’s involvement and celebrates its identity,” the Awards jury said. It also “demonstrates a commitment to environmental principles.”

Two school projects received Awards. St Margaret College’s Gymnasium and Chapel, designed by Athfield Architects and a recipient an Award in the Education category, is a “multi-functional facility” that “sits neatly within its central campus complex, as a link to future staging and a cloistered building mass.”

The repair of Harper and Julius Houses at Christ’s College, undertaken by Wilkie + Bruce Registered Architects, received its Award in the Sustainable Architecture category. The jury congratulated the College and its architects “for retaining and painstakingly putting back together with great care and attention to detail the exterior of this Category 2 Heritage building, originally designed by Benjamin Mountfort.

The University of Canterbury made it into the Awards list with the James Hight Undercroft, an “energised transformation of an unloved Brutalist space used for housing bikes into a core area for student life”. Warren and Mahoney Architects were the authors of this work, which was awarded in the Interior Architecture category.

Several retail projects were recognised in the 2013 Canterbury Architecture Awards. Fendalton Road Shops, designed by Athfield Architects, a winner in the Commercial Architecture category, is “a sensitive, contextual response to its suburban setting,” the jury said.

Sala Sala Japanese Restaurant, designed by Herriott + Melhuish Architecture (HMA), received an Award in the Interior Architecture category. “A quintessential Japanese dining experience is created through the simple and direct spatial arrangement of a limited palette of materials and colours,” the Awards jury said.

Fulton Ross Team Architects and their clients were praised by the jury for their work on a “significant cluster of heritage buildings in Christchurch CBD under imminent threat of post-quake demolition.” This project, which entailed the retention and repair of “a group of buildings in which the whole is clearly greater than the sum of the parts,” received its Award in the Sustainable Architecture category.

Two complementary buildings were the only projects to be awarded in the Heritage category. The work on both Annandale Homestead and Annandale Shepherds Cottage was undertaken by Patterson Associates. The jury said Annandale Homestead is “an outstanding example of the re-presentation of a historically important building, in a manner that allows for an appreciation of its past and an anticipation of its future.”

Of Annandale Shepherds Cottage, the Awards jury said: “The magic in this project lies in its realisation of the romantic notion of facing the raw elements in the kind of safety offered by a newly cared-for simple hut, which in its history has sheltered many a grateful soul.” Both Homestead and Cottage also received Awards in the Sustainable Architecture category.

Houses, traditionally a forte of New Zealand’s architects, were well represented among the winning projects, with eight private residences picking up Awards in the Housing category.

Sumich Chaplin Architects’ Christchurch House is, the jury said, “an elegant response to its site and an understated and respectful contribution to its spacious Fendalton context.”

At Clifton House, Herriot + Melhuish: Architecture (HMA) worked with the daughter of the house’s original owner to reinvent the home for her retirement use. The jury said the architects have “recognised the power of the original dwelling and the passion of its owners with judicious re-planning to provide a better flow and use of spaces while retaining the integrity of the original design.”

C Nott Architects’ Ilam House is, in the jury’s word, “an engaging alternative to the typical suburban residence” in which “a clever assemblage of spaces and rooms wrapped around a number of outdoor living courts give the house an implied generosity well beyond its footprint”.

The same practice also won an Award for Tekapo Tractor Shed – “a clever response, robust and not at all precious, to a client’s particular lifestyle and accommodation requirements”.
The jury described Merivale House, a large inner-city suburban house designed by Matz Architects, as “an elegant response to its site” which “makes an understated and respectful contribution to its neighbourhood”.

New House-Fernside, a house designed by Wilkie + Bruce Registered Architects, received an Award in the Sustainable Architecture as well as in the Housing category. The house, the jury said, is “a clear and rationalised design” which “addresses the conditions of an exposed open pasture site and provides a clear solution to the occupants’ need for a comfortable, warm home”. The jury added that the architects have shown a “sure grasp of all the passive environmental principles”.

The design of the Ngaio Point Bach at Akaoroa by Wilson & Hill Architects “gives a twist to the traditional typology of a two-storied bach by responding to the site’s numerous vistas with a stepped, seaward façade beneath an offset, traditional pitched roof.”

Pentre Terrace House by Cymon Allfrey Architects is, the jury said, “a very good example of significant site knowledge, a simple concept and a robust design process combining with successful architect-client engagement to provide a clear and legible result.”

All winners of 2013 Canterbury Branch Architecture Awards are eligible for consideration for the top tier of the annual Awards programme, the New Zealand Architecture Awards. These awards will be announced in May 2014.

The New Zealand Architecture Awards programme is supported by Resene and judged by juries appointed by the New Zealand Institute of Architects and its branches.

2013 CANTERBURY ARCHITECTURE AWARDS – CITATIONS

Commercial Architecture

Air New Zealand Regional Lounge Christchurch
BVN Donovan Hill and Jasmax Ltd in association
Evincing contextual awareness and a strong sense of place, eminently suitable in scale and function, this building is an excellent portal to and from the regional airports of New Zealand. A finely articulated entry façade composed of clearly distilled forms provides a welcoming entry and leads to a relaxed and casual lounge space. The simple, dynamic airside façade presents a delightful sense of movement appropriate to, and associated with, smaller-scale air travel; the demarcation from the neighbouring International Terminal is handled sensitively, to the benefit of both buildings. Materials, textures and colours are deployed subtly and sympathetically to achieve an understated substantiality, and, in the interior, an unusually tactile architecture. The project is a clever answer to the logistical problem of transporting goods through the facility to the terminals; the Architects have turned this challenge into an opportunity to scoop light into the body of the terminal.

Christchurch International Airport, Integrated Terminal Project
Warren and Mahoney Architects Ltd and Hassell in association
With a program that maximises the use of space through the careful handling of overlapping functions, this project is a clear distillation, of the circulation patterns and logistical requirements of large-volume air travel. Innovative planning allows the check-in hall to be used for both international and domestic departures, and the high ratio of self-service kiosks and compact check-in desks accelerates passenger processing. The clever use of passenger gates which swing from domestic to international, together with combined automated baggage handling, further simplifies flows within the terminal, as does a clear spatial progression that provides a clear route through the terminal.

Lounge areas are relaxed, spacious and discretely well served by concessions to the periphery of spaces. Visual connections both landside and airside provide a clear sense of place, not only within the terminal but also within the wider context of the airport’s urban and alpine hinterlands, although the opportunity to make more of the terminal’s status as an international gateway is perhaps subordinated to the quest for technical rigour. A large commitment to ESD includes an artesian ground source heat exchange system that reduces the building’s carbon footprint. Also laudable is the realisation of such planning clarity through a multiplicity of construction phases during which the full operation of the existing terminals was maintained.

Fendalton Road Shops
Athfield Architects Limited
The building is a sensitive, contextual response to its suburban setting. A carefully considered façade provides the pleasure of well-ordered small-scale elements, including the relief-work on the shop fronts, fabric canopies, and textured copper upper-level cladding. This scale achieves for individual shop owners all the niceties of volume, light and variety of identity. The carefully scaled building design, material selections and street landscape combine to provide an edge that is comfortably occupied, despite the busy state of the road intersection, and, as such, hints to an association with the community it serves.

Education

St Margaret's College - Gymnasium and Chapel
Athfield Architects Limited
The form of this multifunctional facility sits neatly within its central campus context, as a link to future staging and a cloistered building mass. A double-height welcoming entrance acts as a lantern to the core of the building. While this core space is created by the amalgamation of the two breakout spaces between the gym and theatre, it is, thanks to the considered arrangement of its dynamic plan, a generous light-filled hub in its own right, fit for multiple uses. The form of the combined theatre/chapel auditorium provides, for all its occupancy capacity, a space of evident intimacy and offers very good stage engagement. Textural interest and warmth are present throughout the project, particularly in the auditorium, and are achieved through the use of twisted plane side walls and a radially tiered timber acoustic ceiling system.

Heritage

Annandale Homestead
Patterson Associates Limited
This heritage project, reconciling observance of a Category II Historic Places Trust status and contemporary requirements, includes the Homestead and adjacent out-buildings, some of which have been strategically repositioned, along with the site’s entranceway. The Architects have acknowledged the core of the original homestead, and successfully addressed the accretions that are the legacy of 130 years of history. Removal of poor additions and a thoughtful, partial rearrangement of the original service areas have unlocked the house’s current plan and restored its simple and elegant form. Where interior works have necessitated departure from the original, there remains an overall sense of authenticity; the modern overlays that are present serve to interpret the Homestead’s history. The desire for authenticity is evidenced in the attention to many details, such as the reconstruction of original door locks, retention of original glass sheets, re-use of lightly restored original materials, and the visibility of historic remnants. The result is an outstanding example of the re-presentation of a historically important building, in a manner that allows for an appreciation of its past and an anticipation of its future.

Annandale Shepherds Cottage
Patterson Associates Limited
This is an exceptional resurrection of a quirkily proportioned shepherd’s cottage that, most certainly, would soon have been demolished by a decent storm. The raw atmosphere of the original structure has been retained, with floors and walls cleaned but not refurbished, allowing for an immediate emotional connection to a rugged past. The addition of a humble lean-to provides a kitchen and a bathroom in which, where possible, fittings are concealed by recycled boards to minimise visible intervention. A carefully considered gable dormer addition to the north façade, providing views of the Kaikouras from a romantic attic single bedroom, is an authentic addition. The living area is furnished in a rugged, understated fashion, rendering the luxury of escaping the elements, when huddled against the old shepherds’ fireplace, all the more enjoyable. The magic in this project lies in its realisation of the romantic notion of facing the raw elements in the kind of safety offered by a newly cared-for, simple hut, which in its history has sheltered many a grateful soul.

Housing

Christchurch House
Sumich Chaplin Architects
This house is an elegant response to its site and an understated and respectful contribution to its spacious Fendalton context. On the façade a solid, plastered base form is balanced by dark-stained, recessed shuttered balcony spaces with small-scale copper shingle overhanging roofs, imparting a depth and texture that grounds the house on its leafy site. Clearly conceived planning orients the kitchen and living spaces toward the sun, and provides a variety of outdoor spaces sheltered from the winds. The clarity of the spatial arrangement also sets up relaxed circulation patterns between well-proportioned rooms, and lends an overall sense of ease to the interior of the home. The interior finishes and colours reinforce a quiet sense of repose, and presents this as a well-considered home.

Clifton Hill House
Herriot + Melhuish: Architecture Ltd (HMA)
In a nice architectural story gone full circle, the client worked on her father’s 1960s dream house as a labourer and returned to reinvent and add to it in her retirement years. The Architects have recognised the power of the original dwelling and the passion of its owners with judicious replanning to provide a better flow and use of spaces while retaining the integrity of the original design. A carefully reworked external entry court and a well-sited, robust, off-the-form concrete garage, visible from the main living area, provide juxtaposed foils to the original house. Landscape design, key to providing access to a new workshop at the rear off the house, has been essential to the project’s success. The interior refit has treated the kitchen and bathrooms as containers inserted into the shell of the dwelling, providing a clear distinction between shell and core. The Architects have dealt extremely well with an interesting set of historic preconditions and a difficult, steep site with limited opportunity for building placement, and have provided a delightful solution for the house’s owners.

Ilam House
C Nott Architects Ltd
In this engaging alternative to the typical suburban residence, a clever assemblage of spaces and rooms wrapped around a number of outdoor living courts, give a house an implied generosity well beyond its footprint: the house, in a sense, is a Tardis. Clever planning breaks the house into zones – for parents and children, entry and living – which may be opened up to one large, spacious home. Assembled with very little fuss to detail, the house is a casual and easy family home.

Merivale House
Matz Architects
This large inner-city suburban house is an elegant response to its site and makes an understated and respectful contribution to its neighbourhood. On the façade solid fair-faced concrete panels are balanced with a controlled material palette. The planning of the house is clear: a central heroic gallery running south to north sets up smaller-scaled responses, with a breakup of the house into private and public spaces that link to courtyards, and relate to function, climate orientation and view. The clarity of the spatial arrangement also sets up relaxed circulation patterns between well-proportioned rooms, and gives an overall sense of ease to the interior of the home.

New House – Fernside
Wilkie + Bruce Registered Architects Ltd
A clear and rationalised design addresses the conditions of an exposed open pasture site and provides a clear solution to the occupants’ need for a comfortable, warm home, predominantly for two people but with room for visiting family, within a reasonable budget. The response is a simple and effective sectored layout, which prioritises the main living and master bedroom areas directly north, with guests to the west and garage entry to the south. Internal planning is well organised and, with main and secondary circulation routes, split about an east west axial wall; living areas are light and airy, and well connected to the environs. The design takes account of the winds that cross the site by creating sheltered spaces between the house forms. The dwelling presents a low profile generally with an uncompromising face of concrete block to the south, and a well fenestrated open façade to the north.

Ngaio Point Bach – Akaroa
Wilson & Hill Architects Limited
The design gives a twist to the traditional typology of a two-storied bach by responding to the site’s numerous vistas with a stepped, seaward façade beneath an offset, traditional pitched roof. The dialogue set up between these two elements celebrates the building’s place in the Peninsula. This playful modulation has positively affected the bach’s interior spaces, providing interest within the plan of living and dining areas, and creating a sense of light-hearted space in the upper bedrooms. The interior is appropriately unpretentious; the effect is one of uncomplicated living among straightforward materials.

Pentre Terrace House
Cymon Allfrey Architects Limited
A good example of significant site knowledge, a simple concept and a robust design process combining with successful Architect-client engagement to provide a clear and legible result. Central to the concept of the house is a joyous, light-filled central living pavilion, to which all other ancillary activities are loosely attached in various modules of building form. This organising principle is evident on the descent from the house’s entry, a pleasant journey leading to the prize of the living pavilion and a series of outdoor living spaces. The power of the central living pavilion is in its ascending ridgeline, which provides an opening view, along its axis over a grass court and upward to a planted hillside, that creates dynamism within the space. The space also flows to a protected northerly court with views over the plains. Transcending the constraints of a rebuild, the new home has achieved a closer relationship with the surrounding context and expresses a more joyful personality.

Tekapo Tractor Shed
C Nott Architects Ltd
The house is a clever response, robust and not all precious, to a client’s particular lifestyle and accommodation requirements. Aspect and location provided a context, and a clearly defined concept – a series of loosely linked and separated shed forms – informed by strong environmental considerations drove a project that was extremely well executed from inception to completion. The unashamedly simple forms are sited in an informal tussock landscape consistent with the wider context and the planning maximises sun and wind protection, and views of Lake Tekapo. Elements showing real delight and a bespoke fit with the clients’ needs, including a semi-enclosed union space in the main dwelling and an operable corner to a secondary pavilion, raise the house well above an ordinary level.

Interior Architecture

Air New Zealand Regional Lounge Christchurch
BVN Donovan Hill and Jasmax Ltd in association
Masterfully deploying structure, materials, colour and forms, the Architects have produced a well-researched and delightfully creative interior that imparts a regional identity to the airport terminal. There is no doubt this feels like an appropriately South Island terminal: the dark floor refers to the region’s river beds; an heroic timber truss anchors the interior; and the play of timber ceiling panels outlines a window-edge silhouette of the Southern Alps. In this context, the loose placement of the central ribbed coffee station and the sinuous black seating cannot but transport you to somewhere along the coastline of the South Island, Te Waka a Māui.

Sala Sala Japanese Restaurant
Herriot + Melhuish: Architecture Ltd (HMA)
A quintessential Japanese dining experience is created through the simple and direct spatial arrangement of a limited palette of materials and colours, in which light bamboo, dark-stained timber, stainless steel, Perspex and glass feature as the main elements. A low floor-to-ceiling height is treated cleverly as a dark plane for the main space, with further lowering at the continuous kitchen-dining interface. The success of the space is attributable to the handling of this interactive edge between the dining counter and the main kitchen, with careful detailing given to the counter, cooking area, extraction detailing, and glass backdrop wall. The discrete lighting of the ceiling edges and under-counter further enhances the Japanese ambience and aids the transformation of this formerly small domestic room into a generous restaurant space.

The University of Canterbury: James Hight Undercroft
Warren and Mahoney Architects Ltd
This is an energised transformation of an unloved Brutalist space used for housing bikes into a core area for student life. The solution to the deeply buried space is successful because it allows sufficient visual linkage to the outside through peripheral edge spaces, and has become part of a covered route through the campus. The vitality of the project, which admits light into and promotes movement through the covered route, is enhanced by a raised street of tenancies which overlook the central court space. The form and materiality of the original heavy concrete structure are respected, but juxtaposed with new elements to provide a lighter and more activated space. The insertion of slatted cedar ceilings, primary-coloured wall elements and furniture, along with randomised flooring layouts and careful lighting, give ease to a space that could have been forbidding.

Public Architecture

Aranui Library
Christchurch City Council
This library reflects its community and its ethnicity, invites that community’s involvement and celebrates its identity. The building, with its clearly articulated spatial arrangement, expresses a strong form concept. A sense of openness within the body of the library communicates a sense of approachability, particularly to younger community members. Appropriately chosen robust materials are detailed to maximise the building’s durability with minimum maintenance. The Architects have provided a working environment that has exceeded client and staff expectations.

Caroline Bay Aquatic Centre
Boon Goldsmith Bhaskar Brebner Team Architects Ltd
A successfully abstracted aquatic façade, developed to present a sense of lightness, acts as a signifier of the centre’s activity. There is a clear entry point and the strong procession through the portal entry is enhanced by the visual linkage through to the pool areas. The lighting strategy is very successful, with excellent use of daylight at the roof level. This illuminates the interior, through the formation of both a readable continuous axis and individual light pods over the pool area; the result is a play of light over the reflective water. The strong internal axis continues through a row of column trees supporting a pool space uncluttered by obvious structure and services.

Selwyn Aquatic Centre
Warren and Mahoney Architects Ltd
The Architects have taken a very clear and direct approach to what is a very complex public facility. The base form anchors the building while a floated wing-like roof presents a sense of lightness, hinting at the nature of the centre’s activities. A clear entry point and strong east-west planning procession sets up a very clear movement pattern, with wet and dry galleries to the north and south exterior walls. This arrangement allows for a clear readability of the building and its functions, and will enable extensions to be easily added with the extrusion of the plan, both to the east for support rooms and the west for more and or larger pools. The plant room straddles the up and down from the main floor level and again enables a very simple movement of water below floor level and movement of air above. On the north side, extensive use of natural light along the full length of the façade also brings passive heat gain.

Sustainable Architecture

Annandale Homestead
Patterson Associates Limited
This is successful heritage project reflects the huge benefits that may be realised from the collaboration between a strong, aspirational client, sensitive and innovative Architects, sympathetic engineers and enlightened heritage consultants, and a patient and proficient contractor. A clear understanding of the building’s architectural history, and the strength of its particular aspects, provides for current and future celebration and enjoyment of its heritage and style.

Annandale Shepherds Cottage
Patterson Associates Limited
This is successful heritage project reflects the huge benefits that may be realised from the collaboration between a strong, aspirational client, sensitive and innovative Architects, sympathetic engineers and enlightened heritage consultants, and a patient and proficient contractor. A clear understanding of the building’s architectural history, and the strength of its particular aspects, provides for current and future celebration and enjoyment of its heritage and style.

Aranui Library
Christchurch City Council
A community library that reflects its community and its ethnicity, invites its involvement and celebrates its identity, is sustainable by its very nature. The orientation, planning and form of the building demonstrate a commitment to environmental principles, exemplified by the introduction of passive ventilation, thermal chimneys and a mechanical heat recovery system that delivers heating to the building.

Harper and Julius Houses at Christ’s College
Wilkie + Bruce Registered Architects Ltd
The jury congratulates Christ’s College and its Architects for retaining and painstakingly putting back with great care and attention to detail the exterior of this Category 2 Heritage building, originally designed by Benjamin Mountfort. The project entailed a significant financial commitment over and above the insurance coverage, and it is gratifying to see that the School values its outstanding architectural heritage. The building provides the south façade to one of Christchurch’s best examples of cloistered buildings, forming a green quadrangle that clearly celebrates Christ College’s collegiate life. It was perhaps unfortunate that, given the extent of the interior seismic reinforcing undertaken, more time was not given to resurrecting the heroic Gothic interior lost in an earlier alteration.

New House – Fernside
Wilkie + Bruce Registered Architects Ltd
The Architects have pursued a clear and direct approach to context for this modest house, which exhibits a sure grasp of all the passive environmental fundamentals and incorporates sustainable mechanical intervention for heat generation.

New Regent Street Shops
Fulton Ross Team Architects Ltd
This significant cluster of heritage buildings in the Christchurch CBD was under imminent threat of post-quake demolition and the jury congratulates the Architects and their collective clients for their foresight in retaining and repairing a group of buildings in which the whole is clearly greater than the sum of the parts. Given the nature of the project, and the unusual circumstance of the process followed, the jury felt it appropriate to award this project in the category of sustainability rather than heritage, as the focus was clearly more on retention than restoration.

Selwyn Aquatic Centre
Warren and Mahoney Architects Ltd
A common sense approach to planning, orientation and function sets this building up comfortably to address all the fundamentals associated with passive energy utilisation. A clear understanding of functionality allows the building to react easily to the demands of a volatile environment, and benefit from the incorporation of sustainable mechanical intervention for heat recovery generation and ventilation.

ENDS

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