New Zealand architecture firm, Patterson Associates, has just been named one of the world’s top 21 architecture firms in the World Architecture News (WAN) 21 of 21 Award.

Urbis has featured the Parihoa House located on a cliff-top farm site in West Auckland as well as The Michael Hill Gold Clubhouse in Queenstown. The other projects that the firm included in their award submission were Mai Mai Folly, a beautiful feather-fronted house in Auckland, Cumulus, a commercial building in Parnell, the AJ Hackett Bungy Centre in Queenstown. Each Patterson project is unique, responding to individual sites, cultural and social histories of the area, and the way the clients live or work. However, Patterson projects are usually dynamic in form, shifting off a rectilinear grid to create slightly unusual interior spaces, heavy and anchored into the earth (often dug into the landscape), and structurally complex and astonishing, while not being fussy or tricky.

The awards aim to highlight 21 architects who could be the leading lights of architecture in the 21st century: “outstanding, forward-thinking people and organisations who have the demonstrable potential to be the next big thing in the architectural world; architects whose directional ideas are helping to shape the future of architecture, whilst keeping within the boundaries of commercial viability and sustainability”.

The international jury included architects of renown including David West (Studio Egret West); Patrick Schumaker (Zaha Hadid Architects); Stephen Quinlan (Denton Corker Marshall LLP), Will Alsop (Alsop Architects) and Grant Brooker (Foster Associates).

Congratulations to Patterson Associates.