The Science Centre B302 recognised with NZ Architecture Award
The University of Auckland Science Centre B302 picked up a 2018 NZIA New Zealand Architecture Award for Education at Te Papa on Wellington’s waterfront last night. The newly redeveloped building is the gateway to the University of Auckland’s Science Precinct and provides a world-class facility for leading edge research, teaching and learning.
Cited by the NZIA National Awards Jury as:
A complex project with many goals – to provide 11 floors of specialist teaching and research spaces and offices and communal areas, form connections with existing structures, and establish a ‘gateway’ presence on a prominent site – could easily have resulted in a building that was less than the sum of its various parts. Instead, the architects have met the programmatic requirements and contextual obligations of a demanding brief in a sophisticated and coherent building that enhances the university campus and the wider cityscape. The selection of materials, utilisation of interstitial space, adoption of the atrium as an organising principle, and the knitting of the building into its urban and architectural context are especially commendable aspects of the design.