The Window & Glass Association NZ 2022 Gala Awards Dinner was held at the Christchurch Town Hall on Friday, July 1. The evening celebrated the winners of four apprentice award categories and 10 design award categories, showcasing best in class.
The awards are made possible thanks to a growing list of sponsors supporting WGANZ, the national association representing the window, door and glass industry, including:
Gold Sponsors:
APL, Altus, Assa Abloy, Glasscorp, Metro, Omega, Technoform, FMI, and Viridian.
Silver and Bronze Sponsors:
Doric, Dulux, Dynex, Glass Team, AGP, 5R Solutions, Allegion, Saint-Gobain and PPL.
This year’s winners were:
Supreme Winner, and the Designing With Glass Commercial Award winner — Thermaseal Smart Glass Solutions, for Hotel Ebb, Dunedin
Residential Award under $50,000 — Altherm Taranaki, for Parrs Road
Residential Award $51,000 to $150,000 — Design Windows Central Otago, for Ruby Ridge
Residential Award over $151,000 — Origin Residential, for Memory Rock
Commercial Award under $100,000 — The Glass Room, for Cathedral Square Post Office Building, Christchurch
Commercial Award over $100,000 — Wight Aluminium, for Puhinui Interchange, Auckland
Designing with Glass, Residential Award — Metro Performance Glass, for Ferg’s House, Sandy Bay, Northland
Designing with Glass, Commercial Award — Thermaseal Smart Glass Solutions, for Hotel Ebb, Dunedin
Showroom Award — Aspiring Glass, for Aspiring Glass Showroom, Wanaka
Sustainability Award — Wight Aluminium, for Watson House
Apprentice of the Year — Architectural Aluminium Joinery: Emma McIntyre, Elite Window Solutions, Warkworth
Apprentice of the Year — Glass & Glazing (and winner of the Alan Sage Memorial Award): Charmaine Farquhar, Central Glass & Aluminium, Palmerston North
Most Promising Apprentice — Architectural Aluminium Joinery: Jonty Smith, Envision Aluminium, Blenheim
Most Promising Apprentice — Glass & Glazing: Liam Derbyshire, Central Glass, Whanganui
Judges’ comments:
Supreme Winner and the Designing with Glass Commercial Award – Thermaseal Smart Glass Solutions, for Hotel Ebb, Dunedin
The Supreme Winner this year impressed the judges in a number of ways, not least by the range of glass applications which it employed.
The Hotel Ebb presents to the street as a glass building, but one with an arresting simplicity of outline that conceals a host of complexity and delight that becomes apparent on closer inspection.
The glazing of the facade serves as a medium for a printed artwork — something glass is eminently well-suited to be; the interior balustrades are of an unusual simplicity and transparency which gives a dramatic sense of openness to the atrium; the rooms themselves save space and transmit light through the elegant obscure glazed partitions which separate sleeping from bathing.
In many ways, this building is a showcase for the multiple capabilities of glass in construction, here realised through an apparently seamless sequence of good decisions in design, fabrication and installation.
Everyone involved in the project should feel a real sense of achievement, and this Supreme Award recognises that.
Designing with Glass, Commercial Award — Thermaseal Smart Glass Solutions, for Hotel Ebb, Dunedin
In this project the properties and opportunities which glass provides have been understood and exploited to the full.
The facade, which is fully glazed, serves as a canvas for a glass art installation printed on it. The interiors feature a glazed atrium and glazed balustrades to stairs and landings. In the suites, obscured glass partitions separate bathrooms from bedrooms.
In short, glass has been selected as a preferred material in as many situations as possible and, in every case, it has been considered and handled with great care and grace.
This is, effectively, a showroom for what glass can do, and formal gymnastics have been tightly suppressed in a masterly exercise of control to let the material speak for itself.
The designers knew the power of simple geometries, and the fabricators and contractors maintained a similar level of control over their work.
