Past Winners

2025

Craft object

Winner:

Materials Matter by Vincent Heijnen
Other contributors: Renee Brants, Lena Anna Arida de Rouw, Janek Thomas Bosman, Manon Liza L De Kooning, Freek Eigenraam, Frans Ramses Wassen, Emile Marc C Waterkeyn, Merlijn Felix Lewerissa, Noor Zeeman, Jaron Jonathan Smit, Lisanne Fung, Sijmen An de Vries

Best Student:

Y Shelter by Billy Pengelly
Other contributors: Andrew Barrie Lab

Highly Commended:

Lathed Artefacts - A Series by Lilli Pritchard

Peripheral media

Winner + Best Student + Visionary Award:

The Garden of Broken Shadows by Ali Al Omari

Highly Commended:

Re-Identification Machines by Isabella Zeng
Other Contributors: Thesis Professor - Manfredo Manfredini (University of Auckland)

A Reservoir Folly by Yang Yang Liu

Unbuilt design

Winner + Best Student:

Epiphany Rise by Alexander Wong
Other contributors: Antony Lu

Highly Commended:

NAVIGATING THE WIND : A VESSEL UNVEILS TRADITIONAL WISDOM by Yujie Weng

The Observatory by Lydias Yong

Whare Tiaki Taiao by Nathan Moore

emerging practice

Winner:

Summerhill Community Base by Leith Macfarlane

Highly Commended:

Coatesville Courtyard House by Noah Bian
Other contributors: Auckland Architectural Designs Ltd

Rachel Wegrzyn by Rachel Wegrzyn

2023

“The winning submission of the Supreme Award transcends categories. An urban response that functions as a connector between Victoria Park, the Universities and the Domain, it holds immense potential for urban renewal and degrowth, in addition to presenting a strong and convincing narrative expression. The judges note that this entrant presented three strong submissions and that the quality of design thinking was sustained and evident through all schemes presented.” 

Narrative

Winner + Best Student + Supreme Award:

Rebirth of the Natural World by Janae Van Panahon

“Excellent visual communication and commitment to developing a narrative to explore opportunities for theatrical storytelling. This project demonstrates a non-literal translation of foundational narratives used to guide an architectural response. This scheme also functions as a decolonising gesture that repurposes a historical colonial space and reinterprets in terms of narrative and function that gives mana and expression to mātauranga Māori and place relationships. The judge's also note that an evocative moving image submission was provided, that clearly shows the activation of spaces within the scheme.”

Runner-Up:

Moving Mountains by Grayson Croucher

Highly Commended:

The Hinge of Two Reveries by Kelly Ting

Peripheral

Winner + Best Student:

Sea Change by Lise Jansen-Luke

“This project is clearly presented, both conceptually and visually. It demonstrates a thoughtful choice of medium, and using that medium to read the landscape and make interpretations of the built interventions within it.  Through printmaking as a medium for architectural investigation, this entrant worked with the constraints of the printmaking process to produce a scheme that is topical and relevant. Visually arresting, the final prints also stood on their own merit as visual artefacts.”

Runner-Up:

The Nest by Brandon Carter-Chan, Nicholas Rowsby, and Joseph Trace

Highly Commended:

You Can't Salvage Shit With a 10-Tonne Digger by William King

Degrowth

Winner + Best Student:

Hangi(ng) Together: Traversing the Temporal Terrains of Te Teko by Elim Hu, Kelly Ting, and Shnaia Xu

“This proposal responds to the informal, self-build nature of rural Māori communities by providing a framework to enable the community to organically change and grow over time. As a proposition it is as much about what isn't designed and the space in between, and involves a careful rethinking of existing marae spaces to appropriately respond to future community needs. The project reconsiders how we could and should be responding to building communities and promoting resilience. The judge's also note that this scheme has been sensitively developed and well resolved across a range of scales.”

Runner-Up:

ပစ်တိုင်းတောင် (Pyit-Taing-Htaung, Every time you toss it, it stands up) by Myint San Aung

Highly Commended:

WSCAP by Karl Mendez, Lynette Hunt, Aphiwat Pengpala, and Joelle Tolentino

Retrospective

Winner:

ASB Tennis Centre Redevelopment by Copeland Associates Architects and Compusoft Engineering Ltd

Copeland Associates Architects: Barry Copeland,  John Dymond, Ratanui Fraser, YeoJin Lim, Sienna Kim, Finn Scott

Compusoft Engineering Ltd: Barry Davidson, Anthony McBride

“This project emerged from a partnership between Next Generation Clubs and Tennis Auckland. The intention was to create a world class facility combining the Tennis Club and Stadium with a multi-level Country Club including lounges and café, competition and practice courts, swimming pools, spa and a state-of-the-art-gymnasium.”

2019/20

Open: Conceptual

Winner: Codex of the Third Landscape by Dan Castro

“Through rigorous extractions of our elemental conditions this project identifies the landscapes of our environmental worlds, as an active participant in this design. The design interventions illustrate the tactility of site as the six conditions facilitate and inform the architecture. However, architectural intervention is not the sole objective of this project and in its stance, this provokes a strong position that is relevant to us. Architecture becomes the negotiated party against the nature of these landscapes. This project plucks, pulls and explodes each earthly component critiquing how site is in both the minute occurrences of the whole. It destabilizes the concept of site being hosts in our practice we embrace its raw nature bringing forth the codex of the Third Landscape.”

Runner-Up: An Anthology of Fictional Objects by Cameron Spicer

Runner-Up: Te Waka Huia by Jesse Ewart, Tyler Harlen, and Jason Tan

Highly Commended: Death and Life of Flora by Akiko Liyanage

Highly Commended: Protest Academia by Jeremy Priest

Open: Work in Progress

Winner: Te Whanau Hou Hut by WIlliam King

“Te Whanau Hou Hut is highly considered and deliberate in its celebration of craftsmanship. Displaying a sensitivity to human scale and an understanding that details matter, that we should be building well, regardless of the limitations of budget. Acting as a subtle critique of consumerism, the mass-produced and easily attained is deliberately rejected in favour of the bespoke. Tactile components crafted from reclaimed materials become heirlooms, something to treasure, rather than dispose of once their initial purpose is fulfilled.”

Highly Commended: The Wood Pavilion by Daniel Fennell, Wenhan Ji, Dorien Viliamu, and Leo Zhu

Student: Undergraduate

Winner: Between Art, Activism and Architecture by Jingyuan Huang

“The winner has a deep understanding of the work of the artist Ai Wei Wei’s strong political agenda and at the same time architecturally resolved spaces. There was a cohesive nature between the act of protesting and protesting via architecture and the implementation of Ai Wei Wei’s political stance. Refreshingly provocative, especially at the undergraduate level, demonstrating a high degree of sophistication - balancing visionary thinking about current political issues with a convincing architectural proposal.”

Runner-Up: The Demise by Mikaela King

Runner-Up: Kāmura; Carpentry Guild & Workshop by Tane Pamatatau-Marques

Highly Commended: Te Kahui - A House and Studio for Ralph Hotere by Matthew Connelly

Student: Postgraduate

+ Supreme Award

Winner: Combobulation Station: Uncanny Architecture for Uncommon Objects by Nicole Teh

“As the title suggests, the Combolutation Station reinvents objects of the Anthropocene through an architectural investigation of a community recycling centre. By reassembling familiar items into new uncanny tools for climate change, the proposal triggers a reflection on the traces we leave, from objects to urban developments. It is a powerful yet subtle critique of the current conversation about the ecological crisis, communicated in a captivating visual language that feels familiar yet new; a distorted version of reality. Combobulation Station offers an immersive experience of a visionary development of our epoch which, although represented as a fictional proposal, confronts us with the reality of our profession’s significant anthropocenic footprint.”

 Highly Commended: Happy Hour at the Grogzone by Maito Akiyama

Highly Commended: Faith in Fiordland by Abdallah Alayan

Highly Commended: Childish Architecture in the City by Finn Forstner

Highly Commended: Six Monuments from the North by Jihwan Jeon

Highly Commended: Finding the Mauri by Emily Zheng

2018

Open: Conceptual

Winner: New Zealand’s Rural Enigma by Isaac Sweetapple

“New Zealand’s Rural Enigma is a challenging project that draws on extensive research on masculinity in Aotearoa New Zealand as recorded in various forms of media and cultural production. Perceptive and accurate in the pinpointing of cultural flaws, the project revels in a jokey-blokey position, and knowingly ironic, it bravely holds this position across five provocative architectural propositions; for a billboard/gateway, an abattoir, a chapel to rugby (the national religion), a men’s bathhouse/clubrooms and a bolt-hole for American tech capitalist Peter Thiel. Taking risks with representation, this is a kind of anti-architecture – we do not really want to see this kind of architecture, but we do really want to see architecture, as a discipline, leveraged for just this kind of critical engagement with the world”.

Runner-Up: The Lost Carpark by Yan Li

Highly Commended: Scholastic Dynamism by Abdallah Alayan
Highly Commended: Victims of the Korean War by Tamin Song
Highly Commended: No Happy Ending This Time by Jessica O’Reilly and Max Irving-Lamb

Open: Work in Progress

Winner: Kapiti Watchtower by the Wellington team of Sam Kebbell, Cam Wilson, Riley Adams-Winch, Callum Leslie, Andrew Charleson and Martin Bryant

“The Kapiti Watchtower or Museum of Itself/MOI,  is a departure point for visitors to Kapiti Island.  The project cleverly deploys public behaviour no. 1 - selfie photography - to do more than decorate Facebook pages. Along elevated boardwalks this performative architecture encourages tourists to gratify their selfie urges and simultaneously participate in a citizen-science project.  Peripheral data  captured in the images records incremental environmental change, vegetation growth and shifting dunes for example.  A  signal-striped paint job invigorates the architecture, and functions as a height gauge to measure this change. This design is ingeniously conceived and sensitively scaled, a coastal architecture that is smart and delightful”.

Runner-Up: Tall Hut by Craig Moller and Areez Katki

Student: Undergraduate

Winner: Rata’s Lesson of Whakaaetanga by Finn Forstner

“Two strong themes came out in undergraduate projects; social / community housing and indigenising the city. The winning project is an exquisitely drawn joyous transformation of a stolid, intractable modernist tower in Albert St currently inhabited by the Auckland Council. An architectural epiphyte, this mobile, dynamic tensile, lightweight, temporary architecture, animates the existing structure through an outsider carnival, fairground temporal quality that draws on creatures who inhabit the rata”.

Runner-Up: Beauty of Change by Jingyuan Huang, Angela Lai, Dennis Byun, Todd Min, Shuren Ma, John Woo, Harry Tse and Chris Choi

Highly Commended: Vakas of the Great Fleet by Dorien Viliamu
Highly Commended: Journey into the Dark Horizon by Tamin Song
Highly Commended: Revealing Horotiu by Sam Moloney

Student: Postgraduate

+ Supreme Award

Winner: Three by Jeremy Priest

“Three proposes an architecture that uniquely addresses the housing crisis in suburban Auckland by designing a network of 30m2 infill dwellings. It seeks to abandon backyard fences by occupying the unused space at the boundary line. This is a quiet project – but through further investigation it proposes a radical suburban proposition that celebrates architecture. Each infill house is finely detailed and spatially complex, taking into consideration the utilities as these are collectively threaded underneath and above the garden pavilions. A truly compelling project that reacts to the wider context of our society whilst creating a bespoke individualised architecture that could be realised”.

Runner-Up: Mapping the Feke by Icao Tiseli
Runner-Up: Newton Central Kindergarten by Henry Fraser

Highly Commended: Machine of Agonistic Engagement by Jin Woo Kuk
Highly Commended: Endangered Architecture: The Resuscitation of the Last Li Village by Jintao Yang

2017

2016

2015

2014

2011

2013

2012

2010

2009

Open

Joint Winner: Patterson Associates: Lighting up the Auckland Harbour Bridge
Joint Winner: Oh.no.sumo: Cupcake pavilion prototype

Merit: Jasmax and Dry Dairy for ‘Rubix Muse’
Merit: Jason Dobbs

2008

Open

Winner: Andrew Sexton

Runner up: Mark Ritchie

Merit: Sean Monro and Jun Tsujimoto
Merit: Paul Clarke
Merit: Andrew Patterson

2007

Open

Cheshire Architects and Holmes Consulting (combined)

2006

Open

Sam Kebbell

2005

Open

Julie Wilson
Megan Rule

2004

Open

Glamuzina Architecture (Ernie Lau, Dominic Lau & Dominic Glamuzina)
Carl Douglas
Katrina Simon
Jacky Bowring

2003

Open

Megan Rule & Julie Wilson

2002

Open

Shannon Joe
Sue Hillery & Jack McKinney

2001

Open

Elvon Young & Graeme Cunningham
Eqo Leung of Opus Architecture

2000

Open

Jacky Bowring
Andre Hodgskin Architects
Giles Reid

1999

Open

Jane Priest
Giles Reid

1998

Open

Richard Priest Architects
Jonathan Gibb
Glenn Watt & Jo Craddock

1997

Open

Pete Bossley
Timothy Hay & Jeffrey Fearon
Giles Reid

1996

Open

Pip Cheshire
Architectus
Architecture Workshop
Apple
Michelle Bond
Jacqueline Khiu & Dean Mackenzie

1995

Open

Andrews Scott Cotton Architects (John Sofo & Richard McGowan)
Andrew Barrie (of Ministry Architecture)
Constable Dodd Hurst Architects
Thom Gill & Tadeusz Rajwer of Jock Clark Architects

1994

Open

1993

Open

Jane Priest
Giles Reid

1992

Open

Russell Cannons & Martin Evans
Mary Jowett
Studio of Pacific Architecture & Studio 33

1991

Michael Pepper
John Irving
Stephen Auld
John Hawkhead
Guy Marriage & Andy Anderson
Darren Hoad & Steve Catterall

We are working on adding winners from the years prior to 1991. Please be patient while we do this.