Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre wins awards

MEDIA RELEASE
21 May 2011

Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre
wins New Zealand architecture’s big prize

A graceful and innovative new building at one of New Zealand’s iconic tourist sites has been awarded the 2011 New Zealand Architecture Medal, the country’s premier architecture award.

The Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre was acknowledged as the year’s best building at a New Zealand Institute of Architects ceremony in Auckland last night.

A jury of leading architects described the southern Waikato building, designed by Wellington firm Architecture Workshop for site operator Tourism Holdings Ltd, as “imaginatively conceived and masterfully executed”.

“In this adventurous project, the vision of the clients has been matched by the daring of the architect and the engineer, and the effort put into researching the design has been equaled by the care taken in realising the building,” the jury said.

“The Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre confidently demonstrates that, in New Zealand, a building in a landscape can be an attraction in its own right. An inspired design has been translated into an inspirational building.”

Serving as a gateway to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, which have been a tourist attraction for 120 years, the Visitor Centre comprises tourist gathering areas, a 250-seat dining area, retail, seminar and exhibition spaces and a café and theatre.

Architecture Workshop director Chris Kelly says he designed the building’s vaulting, lightweight canopy to express his concept of “a simple lightweight sky shell to counterpoint the subterranean cave space”.

The “sky shell” spans the pathways to the Glowworm Caves and, Kelly says, maintains a strong connection to the established kahikatea bush.

The canopy consists of a membrane of “inflated pillows” tethered like a fly sheet over a geometrically complex timber grid developed by Kelly and Wellington engineer Alistair Cattanach and peer reviewed by British firm Happold Structural Engineers.

Kelly says the woven timber supporting structure has been interpreted by the local Ruapuha-Uekaha hapu, the owner of the Glowworm Caves site, as a hinaki or eel trap.

The New Zealand Architecture Medal is the pinnacle of the awards programme run by the New Zealand Institute of Architects. In winning the Medal, the Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitor Centre triumphed over the other 23 projects which had received 2011 New Zealand Architecture Awards.

The jury that decided the 2011 Architecture Medal and the 2011 New Zealand Architecture Awards comprised Wellington architect Hugh Tennent, Auckland architects Marshall Cook and Daniel Marshall, and Sydney architect Camilla Block.

ENDS

© Scoop Media