Scion’s timber innovation hub shines a light towards the future of timber construction in NZ, award judges say.

Scion’s award-winning timber innovation hub, Te Whare Nui o Tuteata, has been given another tip of the hat, this time at the New Zealand Timber Design Awards.

The prestigious awards, now in their 48th year, are run by Timber Unlimited and highlight the latest advances in New Zealand’s timber construction capability. The winners of the 12 categories, plus a supreme winner, were announced at a gala dinner in Auckland on November 2.

Te Whare Nui o Tuteata won the Sustainable Development Award and was highly commended in the Innovation Timber Engineering Award category won by Nelson Airport.

The Sustainable Development Award celebrates buildings that have achieved low environmental impact and enhance New Zealand’s unique society and environment, while the Innovation Timber Engineering Award honours engineering and construction innovation that maximises the use of timber with exciting solutions.

Judges for the Sustainable Development Award sang the praises of the building designed by Irving Smith Architects, RTA Studio and Dunning Thornton Consultants.

“[The] building represents a global shift in the way buildings can be designed, prefabricated, assembled, and disassembled,” one judge noted.

“The timber diagrid structure provides a visual aesthetic that brings warmth and expression to the interior.”

The second judge said: “This building shines a light towards the future of timber construction in Aotearoa New Zealand and will help pave the way for ways of designing and building with wood that make use of a wide range of materials and available technology for creating timber buildings.”

A judge in the Innovation Timber Engineering Award category said the highly commended Te Whare Nui o Tuteata was of “global significance”.

“The innovative structural engineering design of this project is based on a deep understanding of timber properties and how timber buildings can be prefabricated and pieced together to form extraordinary buildings.”

Another said the building “set out to explore the frontiers of timber engineering”.

“The Scion building serves as an exemplar of how timber engineering innovation can ensure the sustainable use of the valuable renewable resources that forests provide for building our future.”

Te Whare Nui o Tuteata means the great house of Tuteata. Tuteata is the ancestor of the three hapū who are tangata whenua here – Ngāti Hurungaterangi, Ngāti Taeotu and Ngāti Te Kahu – and the hapū gifted the name to Scion.

The building, officially opened in 2021 by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, has pioneered sustainability and design using engineered wood products and won several domestic and international awards. The design uses a diagonal-grid (diagrid) timber structure, and was embodied-carbon neutral at completion.

This year, Scion sponsored the new Hybrid Building category in the NZ Timber Design Awards, celebrating buildings using timber in combination with other materials.

The category was won by Nelson office Wall-E designed by Irving Smith Architects using timber and concrete to maximise the natural inherent qualities of the individual materials.

Judges said the building was “an outstanding example of ingenuity” that “elevates simplicity to a level of sheer elegance”. The awards are hosted by Timber Unlimited, which is funded by MPI and supported via a consortium including BRANZ, NZ Timber Design Society, Scion and the Wood Processing Manufacturers Association.