Supporting the New Generation of Designers

A few weeks ago a group of us from the Auckland office attended an awards ceremony at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture and Planning. We were really struck by the quality of the work that the students are producing – some really amazing stuff!

John Wardle and I were the jurors this year for S&T’s scholarship awarded for “Design Communication.” Communication in architecture is almost as important as the actual design since architects will always need to be the ‘sales managers’ of their work. Clients have to be convinced that their money is well spent; councils need to be positively engaged to ease the consent process; the public has got to love a project to make it a community success. Even nowadays a star-architect like Zaha Hadid, who taught for 15 years and produced nothing but graphics and paintings before she finally was given a chance to build the Vitra fire station. Her deep thinking was authentically depicted in her imagery and it was this congruence of thoughts and communication that made her final breakthrough inevitable.

S&T was therefore pleased to present the scholarship to David Lau for his work, "Editing Paradigm". He is an immensely talented young architecture student.

I’m still amazed how he successfully managed to lead us through a complex array of topics in a way that is easy to comprehend and also delightful to look at. We appreciated that David withstood the temptation to present a bombardment of visual effects (which he naturally will be capable of) but displayed his work in an adequately concise, professional manner. He is a big talent and the School of Architecture did a fantastic job to let it emerge.

David also was kind enough to come in to present his project to the firm during our Friday night S&T Academy session. Great work, David! We’re left wondering what next year’s students will come up with to top it!