As we start 2022, and the 11th year of the Interior Awards, we’re excited to announce a stellar jury lineup for the awards programme. With in-depth experience, both here in New Zealand and internationally, this year’s judges are looking forward to awarding the country’s top projects and people and celebrating innovation, excellence and design skill.

Find out more about each of them below and see here for the categories and key dates for the 2022 Interior Awards programme.

Naomi Rushmer
Design Director / Interior Architect – Studio Naomi Rushmer

An architect with a passion for “designing experiences”, Naomi started her own studio three years ago with the idea to form specially curated ‘collectives’ for a project. Her focus lies with integrating design across all the senses and her work is wide-ranging in scale and type, including workplace, hotel, retail and wellness, through to residential.

She has been involved in many award-winning projects, working with Designworks, Blur the Lines, Studio Gascoigne, Studio Pritchard and Buschow Henley in London. Naomi was a recipient of the Interior Awards Retail award in 2021 for Comvita with Blur the Lines. She also has a love of life drawing and is inspired by the human form.

DJ Tai
Principal – Cheshire Architects

Dajiang (DJ) is a registered award-winning architect, specialising in commercial hospitality projects at Cheshire Architects. He has recently completed both the studio’s largest and smallest hospitality venues – The Hotel Britomart and the Cafe Hanoi parlour room.

Fluent in Chinese and with an in-depth knowledge of the culture, DJ also manages the studio’s Chinese client relationships, both in New Zealand and overseas.

With 14 years’ architectural experience, DJ’s unique approach can be seen in shaping the project idea to managing a construction site, bringing holistic clarity from concept to execution and ensuring the original intent throughout. He has also expanded the studio’s field of expertise, pushing the architectural boundaries, promoting brand making to product design.

DJ won the Interior Awards Emerging Design Professional Award in 2014 and received the 2021 Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZIA Sir Miles Warren Award for Commercial Architecture for The Hotel Britomart.

Amelia Holmes
Director – Amelia Holmes Interiors

Amelia was born in Ruatoki and studied at Massey University in Wellington. She runs an interior design practice based in Auckland, working alongside a number of leading New Zealand architects. Amelia’s work mostly consists of new-build residential projects, private commercial projects and selected retail environments. Her pared-back designs are best known for the use of natural materials and a restrained colour palette.

Outside of the studio, Amelia is kept busy with her young family.

Nicholas Dalton  (Te Arawa, Ngai Tūhoe, Tūwharetoa, Pākehā)
Director – TOA Architects

The award-winning TOA Architects was founded in 2010 by managing director Nicholas Dalton and has grown from strength to strength over the last 12 years, with 36 staff across three studios in Tāmaki Makaurau, Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Waiariki.

Having grown up in a small village called Mamaku and travelled extensively throughout Europe in his twenties, Nicholas draws inspiration from his whakapapa Māori and is passionate about ensuring architecture moves from ‘New Zealand’ towards ‘Aotearoa’ in a way that celebrates the history of our country and people. Te Taumata o Kupe at Te Mahurehure marae in Point Chevalier is a TOA legacy project, which is due to be completed in 2022 and both challenges and inspires architecture in Aotearoa to acknowledge the rich history and significance of Te Ao Māori within the design and fruition of future buildings.

Nicholas was also listed in the top 40 under 40 influencers in Auckland in 2019, and has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the Australian Institute of Architects annual conference in 2022 (travel permitting). He is looking forward to inspiring and encouraging the next generation of architects to challenge the limitations of architecture while, most importantly, recognising and respecting the indigenous knowledge systems.

Amanda Harkness
Interior editor – Architecture NZ

Now in her second year as convenor of the Interior Awards, Amanda is a former editor of Houses magazine and contributor for Urbis and Interior magazines. She is also assistant editor of Architecture NZ.

While working towards her Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University, she took two architectural papers with the late Russell Walden where she studied the works of architects John Scott, Ian Athfield and Rewi Thompson, as well as the modernists Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. This began a lifelong interest in architecture and design.

Amanda’s career has seen her work in many aspects of media, initially working in magazines then across advertising, television and PR, as well as book editing.