Isthmus Group won three NZIA Local Architecture Awards in Auckland tonight for a diverse group of projects with shared roots in land, people and culture. We’d like to thank our clients and the extended inter-disciplinary teams with whom we have collaborated on these unusual projects.
Freyberg Place and the Ellen Melville Centre won an award in the Heritage category. Delivered together for Auckland Council, this project explored the overlaps between public art, landscape and architecture. Isthmus collaborated closely with artist John Reynolds’ and Stevens Lawsons Architects. The restored building and the new public square provide a unique place that Aucklanders have claimed for themselves.
The next project, Vinegar Lane for client Progressive Enterprises, was a winner in the Urban Design category. This Ponsonby project offers an authentic model for low-rise intensification. It’s an ‘urban subdivision’ of 32 individual freehold lots; the block is broken down into achievable portions individually owned and financed, and designed by a range of architects within a simple set of design guidelines.
The final award went to the smallest project in the Small Project category. The Habitat Markers were developed as part of HLC’s Te Ara Manawa, a coastal walkway designed around the neighbourhoods of Hobsonville Point. Taking the form of large posts, standing or lying down, the markers are micro-architecture, homes for critters. Solid wooden blocks were CNC routed to create a labyrinth of holes and hollows for birds and insects to make their homes within; and in turn for children to explore and encounter nature.
All three projects address the same basic theme; we have a critical responsibility as designers to design for tangata (people) while respecting whenua (land).
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Awards night photos by David St George for NZIA.