I am writing at the tail end of the award season: that time of year when our mates pop up on stage trailing along a client or two, a builder and a collection of the crew from the back room to receive a gong. The award programmes come thick and fast: Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects, the Property Council, the Designers Institute, the Architectural Designers and others out there in Aotearoa. There are those from afar too, importuning us to enter their programmes and post off euros, dollars, fat image files and florid text, all wrapped in high hopes.

I have an ambivalent engagement in these things, wringing my hands at my failure to win awards in programmes I haven’t entered and feeling deeply inadequate when I look closely at the successful. Having never resolved my ambivalence, I marvel at those practices who regularly enter the full range, shooting off entries like fireworks, some incandescently spectacular in their success, some a damp squib, no more than sputtering dreams.

The creators of those projects that have caught the imagination of the judges seem, these days, to signal their successes with Instagram messages in a new lingua franca, coyly dropping a pronoun, annotating a picture of the successful entry with “honoured to have received…”. In a moment that marks me as hopelessly old, I note who uses pronouns and who not, feeling more aggrieved by their absence than that of a framed scroll on my wall or gold pin on the sideboard.

For all my ambivalence, I had the good fortune to find myself on stage introducing those from our studio who had done the real graft and, later, back at the studio, talking about the importance of the awards in words that my angst-ridden ego should listen to. I talked about the effort and commitment that is involved in realising a half-pie decent building: that making a building was like a hurdle race with an opportunity to trip and fall at every challenge. As we gathered around a collection of festive cakes and glasses of champagne, I hoped my words might convey some of the passion exhibited by the star of the Institute of Architects awards, Ivan Davis, Head of Western Springs College Ngā Puna O Waiōrea. 

Davis congratulated Jasmax for their rebuilding of the school and of its Māori immersion-Rumaki unit, in particular. He spoke with clarity and directness as he talked about the way in which the new buildings had strengthened the school’s culture of respect and he spoke of the way that the building fused with and supported the school’s pedagogy. Though he was the most articulate of recipients, all clients who had their few moments at the microphone spoke eloquently of the value of architecture and I was moved again to speculate on how well we in the industry speak for architecture. This was probably an unfair forum to assess how well we proselytise architecture. The importance of affirming the contribution of one’s mates in the back room and the brevity of time at the lectern meant that, at best, there was a brief, halting reference to our art and then it was left to clients to talk up our contributions.

It has been a rugged year for award organisers, the damned bug forcing many of the architecture institute’s entrants to present to a fuzzy computer image of the judges, the Property Council organisers having to reschedule their bash a couple of times and just escaping another washout as a community case in Auckland threatened lockdown again. The Best Awards steamed through without disruption, their task made a little easier by not having to traipse around the country visiting the hopeful.

It was, as they say, okay on the night for all the events, including the NZIA’s digital hook-up that delightfully abandoned the stiff and seemingly endless parade of groups making their way to the stage. Instead, winners were beamed in from afar. This included what looked like a good bash in Whangarei celebrating Craig Moller’s excellent Hihiaua Cultural Centre and another in Queenstown, where the Assembly crowd were whooping it up as their Abodo Showroom project was awarded.

The awards nights allowed little time for reflecting on architecture but the phoenix-like re-emergence of the design press after the woes of COVID’s first assault has begot a major thirst for content. This offers an opportunity for the enthusiastic, the articulate or just the garrulous to have their day. If a model of clear communication were ever needed by those of you keen to grab the megaphone, I suggest you dial up John Walsh’s excellent interview with Kathryn Ryan on RNZ on the occasion of the launch of his and Patrick Reynolds’ wonderful Christchurch Architecture: A Walking Guide. John’s learned and articulate interview was perfectly weighted, presenting the current rebuild work in the context of a city where architecture is often a blood sport.

Erudition with a different focus can be found in the Institute’s submission to MBIE’s Building for Climate Change. This is a fine piece of writing that locates architecture within the complex but increasingly urgent need to constrain the release of carbon into the atmosphere. I imagine there are none in our profession who are unaware of the impending consequences of global warming and none, I hope, who refute our role as specifiers of buildings, most of which are making a significant contribution to the problem. If there are one or two deniers out there, the submission’s introduction makes the argument succinctly “… researchers have calculated a typical New Zealand home emits five times more carbon dioxide than the levels required to stay inside two degrees warming”.

I am sort of heartened by MBIE’s calling for submissions, as it seeks to address this most desperate of issues but, having been brought up on the potency of a good refrain at the barricades, the call to ‘think globally and act locally’ stirs the heart more than the thought of a new rule set from Wellington. Empowering as a good chant is, and especially so when accompanied by direct action, the complexity of the science involved in sorting out appropriate responses for our long, skinny country’s many climates requires help and guidance.

This is the stuff for which the Institute is best suited, harnessing the enthusiasms and energies of those members who willingly give their time to unravelling the complexities of material selection and system specification. The Institute has the apparatus to coordinate, sort and disseminate detailed and specific advice, much as it does on contractual matters and so on. The Institute must now apply this expertise to the greatest problem facing the planet.

Many institute members have signed up to the Architects Declare commitment to act and the impact of building on climate is the subject of much debate on the Architects Forum. These individual commitments must be seized upon, supported and developed into a detailed course of action for large and small practice. The leverage gained from collective wisdom is why we gather together in an institute. If the cost of such an undertaking stresses the national coffers, let us look for a partner, one for whom contributing to our part in humanity’s survival will deliver a programme to rival the wonderful relationship with Resene that has many of us occasionally trooping up to the dais for our moment of fame.