At the 2019 New Zealand Architecture Awards, organised by Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects, the Sir Miles Warren Award for Commercial Architecture was given to 12 Madden by Warren and Mahoney.

Judges said, “12 Madden is an exemplary early manifestation of the intent of a master plan that envisages a lively precinct of mixed-use buildings, both new and old, arranged around laneways providing connectivity and urban grain. As befits a building in an area quickly and self-consciously transitioning from industrial backwater to innovation hub, 12 Madden alludes to the past in its rugged materiality and looks to the future with its flexible and dynamic plan. The building makes a statement and sets a high architectural bar, with its highly articulated exterior, featuring thrusting cantilevers and generous terraces. Sophisticated form-making breaks render a big building compatible with its neighbourhood.”

Warren and Mahoney project description

The architectural approach responds to the form and materiality of the existing character of the precinct and ensures that the resulting architectural form is grounded in the industrial legacy of the waterfront through a vertically stratified massing approach. This is conceived in three layers: a highly articulated, textural brick base with ‘punched’ openings; a terrace datum above – which provides an inhabited ‘negative’ between upper and lower masses; and a more highly glazed upper-level façade. The 12 Madden project, located at the heart of Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, is a six-storeyed commercial building comprising 8700m² of floor space designed to meet the needs of a contemporary workplace paradigm.

This approach is effective in reducing the scale of the project as experienced from the adjacent lanes, providing a one-to-two storeyed spatial datum that enables activation and connection with the terraces. The overhanging upper-level façades on the northern and southern elevations incorporate sliding doors, which enable visual connections while also delivering mixed-mode ventilation.

12 Madden adopts an industrial materiality (brick, steel, timber and glass) and presents highly textural, active edges to all public laneways – a ‘raw’ rather than ‘refined’ expression. Exposed structural systems enhance and contribute to the innovation character and aspirations of the precinct. At a city-wide level, the building adopts a highly modelled roofscape echoing the familiar sawtooth form of industry. In the transformation from ‘industry’ to ‘innovation’, the precinct seeks to reconnect the story of Auckland’s waterfront with innovation, regeneration and entrepreneurship.

See all the winning projects from the 2019 New Zealand Architecture Awards here.