2009 AAA Cavalier Bremworth Design Awards
Two joint winners were declared in the Open section of the
annual Auckland Architecture Association Cavalier Bremworth Design
Awards, held on Thursday 19 November.
Designed to reward design excellence in unbuilt architecture,
the judges were equally impressed with an entry from Patterson
Associates for lighting up the Auckland Harbour Bridge, described
by the judges as "evocative, transformative and doable" and a
display prototype entitled Cupcake from Auckland practise
Oh.no.sumo which was used to sell cupcakes for charity.
International guest judge Camilla Block, from leading Sydney
architectural practise Durbach Block, was joined on the judging
panel by Victoria University lecturer in architecture Simon Twose
and Auckland architect Aaron Patterson. They were unanimous in
their selection of winners and all loved the sculptural forms of
the Cupcake prototype and the potential shown for illuminating one
of Auckland's icons.
The judges said Cupcake was playful scheme illustrated by a
temporary cardboard model that showed a different kind of making
based on material as the first step. "With form not image as the
aim. The fact that it sold cupcakes for charity only adds to the aw
shucks ...."
The winning student entry from AUT spatial design student Yosop
Ryoo entitled "The No Man's Land" focused on the Symonds St
graveyard areas that have been torn apart through the last century.
His entry featured an incredibly detailed model and hand-crafted
companion book. The judges praised his models as the finest
in the room, exhibiting delicate cutting repetition, fine materials
and cinematic moves.
"It is the kind of project where the objects draw you to their
depths. To understand how clearly it identified an urban rift in
the fabric around the cemetery, its neglected state, and proposing
a beautifully wrought rejuvenation: the swaying enclosure, the
system of nods and blinks, the finely crafted graphics. If the
philosophy is at times impenetrable it is likely our failure not
the designers."
Merit awards in the Open section were also awarded to a joint
entry from Jasmax and Dry Dairy for a project called Rubix Muse and
to Jason Dobbs for a pointedly confounding board game on Auckland
architectural planning.
Runner-up in the student section was Mohamed Kheir for an
intricately drawn entry entitled The Stratified Lines of
Deterritorialisation. Student merit awards were also presented to
Hye Ran Lee and James Moore.
