The Awards, which ran alongside the World Governments Summit held in Dubai this week, featured five categories and attracted almost 3000 entries from around the world. Scion was up against Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and London-based Heatherwick Studio’s Google Bay View in the States as the other finalist in what was the only building category.

Rich Naish from RTA Studio was in Dubai to receive the award and says it is a “great honour” to receive recognition on the world stage for innovation developed in New Zealand with partners. 

Jeremy Smith of Irving Smith Architects gave BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann the grand tour of the Rotorua building while Bergmann was visiting New Zealand for an architecture conference.

Walking through the doors of Te Whare Nui o Tuteata for the first time, Bergmann says he was struck by the timber building’s warmth.

“Being a finalist in the same category is a great honour. The Dubai award celebrates work that innovates the building industry and Te Whare Nui o Tuteata and Google’s building both achieve that.”

The awards were held for the first time since 2019 in Dubai at the World Governments Summit. They featured five categories and attracted almost 3000 entries from around the globe.

Judging for this category recognised “the most iconic, smart, innovative, human-centric sustainable projects that combine green design and construction practices with modern, intelligent architectural excellence in an innovative eco-human-cultural approach.”

The win adds to the list of more than 20 national and international awards Te Whare Nui o Tuteata has taken home since opening in 2021.

The building’s name, meaning the great house of Tuteata, acknowledges Tuteata who is the ancestor of the three hapū who are the tangata whenua here: Ngāti Hurungaterangi, Ngāti Taeotu and Ngāti Te Kahu. The name was gifted to Scion by those three hapū.

The three-storey 2000sqm building was built using a diagrid timber structure using less material than traditional structures. The building has also been designed to be carbon-zero meaning it stores as much carbon as was emitted during its construction.

Of the Scion award, the jury said: “This project is poised to transform the landscape with its vision to reimagining the headquarters of the prestigious Scion Research Institute, which specialises in technology development for forestry. Located on the outskirts of Redwoods in the magnificent Whakarewarewa Forest, the primary goal of this project is to bring together a workforce that was previously dispersed across various small buildings across the campus, in a central innovation hub. It also seeks to improve the Scion Institute’s public interface by building a new campus arrival point.”

“The award recognises that innovating ways to sustainably participate with the wider environment through our renewable timber resources is globally significant,” says Smith. “It all feels rather amazing from far, far away.”

“It feels amazing to be doing this kind of innovative work and to get noticed internationally. This building is achieving exactly what Scion is doing with its research — having an impact on the world stage.”

Scion’s Forests to Timber Products general manager Henri Bailleres says the win solidifies the building as an “international timber architecture icon”.

He says the building was carefully designed in a process involving engineers, architects, designers and Scion scientists, and collaboration was the key to success.

“It’s an iconic building because there are a lot of elements attached to it. There are the Māori cultural elements, innovative design elements, seismic resistance, elegant design and maximal use of timber.

“It’s a showcase technically and aesthetically of what can be done with timber,” he says.

“It couldn’t have been done without having this synergy.”

He says Scion led the sustainable building charge and this had flow-on effects, with the new Fisher and Paykel global headquarters being designed by RTA Studios using similar principles of sustainability and timber technology.

More on the awards and the category  winners can be found here.