Winners of the Auckland Architecture Association (AAA) Visionary Architecture Awards 2015 were announced at a ceremony in Auckland on the evening of 17 November. This year, twelve projects were awarded for their exceptional visions for the future. 

The annual AAA Visionary Architecture Awards (previously the Unbuilt Architecture Awards) encourages unrestrained conceptual ideas in the field of architecture. Some are theoretical while others are already in the process of being built. This year, 200 entries were received from leading architectural practices and architectural students around the country.

The judging panel for 2015 was made up of Rewi Thompson (Māori architect and design tutor at University of Auckland), Dean Mackenzie (partner at Monk Mackenzie Architects), Lynda Simmons (registered Architect and Fellow of the NZIA), and Chris Darby (Auckland Council’s Urban Design Champion and deputy chairperson of the Infrastructure and Auckland Development Committees).

The 2015 Conceptual category award winner is Zee Shake Lee, for Moving Grounds: Irrupting Three Kings Inverted Volcanoes. The judges commented, “This project offered a highly abstract, experiential architectural and almost sculptural poetry to a highly complex and topical site in Auckland. Located in the quarry created by the mining of Three Kings - and currently scheduled to be refilled with medium density housing - the project employs five architectural propositions to explore the spatial potential of an extraordinary site and its geology.

“Each proposition, or architectural intervention, interrogates the notion of inhabitation in an eccentric and manufactured landscape and asks questions of our relationship with the urban landscape.”

Robert Pak won the Student category award for his Post Civic project. ”This project recreates and reconnects the Waitemata to the historic train station and in doing so, celebrates and reinforces our civic heart. The bold cultural gesture in part reunites the forgotten Waipapa stream with the sea. In this way, whether it be the stream or the sea, the reconnection acts as a living vein that pumps, resuscitating new life and energy, to revitalise and invigorate a significant part of Auckland’s early heritage, in a new and exciting way,” the judges said.

In 2015, there was no clear winner of the Work in Progress category. In explanation, the judges made the following statement, “The panel has not awarded a first place in the Work In Progress Award category this year, which is a relatively new and undeveloped award, being only in its fourth year. The reason for this is mainly that the standard of work in the Student category was so high this year, that it was decided to recognise this by highlighting a gap between the prizes awarded.

“The panel also wanted to highlight the idea of ‘visionary’ in the title of these awards, and agreed that in the works submitted for the Work in Progress Award, conditions of the ‘real world’ have overcome the visionary concepts at the core of the projects. We did, however, award two commendations, in the recognition of control and sensitivity of two projects which have dealt with the longstanding and well-trodden New Zealand theme of a solitary object set against a wide landscape.”

Full list of winners below:

CONCEPTUAL

• Conceptual category winner: 

Moving Grounds: Irrupting Three Kings Inverted Volcanoes by Zee Shake Lee

• Conceptual category - runner-up: 

Te Whare Tapu o Ngapuhi: ‘An Architectural Response to Taonga Revitalisation’ by Rameka Alexander-Tu’inukuafe

Conceptual category - highly commended: 

The Golden Theatre by Jonathan A. Gibb

Conceptual category - highly commended:

Aftermath of the Spectacle by Linbing (Fatina) Chen

STUDENT

• Student category winner: 

Post Civic by Robert Pak

• Student category - runner-up: 

Whakapapa o Tamaki Makaurau by Hana Greer

• Student category - highly commended: 

Striated Territories, Uncovering Latent Cultural Practices by Guy Newton

• Student category - highly commended: 

Printed City by Liam Stumbles

• Student category - highly commended:

Memory of the Southern Sky by Daniel Yang

• Student category - highly commended: 

Manichean Geometries by Eleanor Glenton

WORK IN PROGRESS

Work In Progress category - highly commended: 

Lauder III by Stuart Taylor

• Work In Progress - highly commended:

Sea Whare by Hana Scott, Gaelle Mirande Broucas, Nick Sayes, Shelly Lin