We attended the New Zealand Architectural Awards Gala dinner on Friday night. It was a night to 'visit your dreams' or at least dream of being rich enough one day to live in an unusual and startling home. We'd never attended one of these events before and neither of us are architects - we expected only that people would be dressed up as required by the 'black tie' instruction on the invitation and that they'd show pictures of the winning buildings.
The event was held in the Auckland Museum. There was free booze, a really nice three course meal and lots of awards to be given out. The surprising element (and most welcome for us) was the unexpected amount of Maori content: Frankie Stevens was the MC and he injected Maori protocol, language and humour throughout the night; there were also several Maori recipients of awards and some Maori clients whose buildings were winners, such as the Mantell's Wanaka Lodge. Deidre Brown won an honorary award for her book on Maori Architecture and it was great to see her again.
The New Zealand Architecture Medal went to Ironbank which we could only concur with.
So inspired were we, we've started designing our own eco-friendly, cheap-as, container home to be built on the next cheapest piece of land we can find bordering an industrial area, and perhaps overlooking the Manukau Harbour.
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