Irving Smith Architects, partnering with RTA Studio – an architectural firm based in Auckland, New Zealand – won the prestigious Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development. The award ceremony took place during the 11th edition of the World Governments Summit (WGS) 2024 in Dubai.

The ‘Scion Innovation Hub, Te Whare Nui O Tuteata – the name gifted by Nga Hapū e Toru – secured the award in the category of the Most Beautiful, Innovative and Iconic Building. Scion, a Crown research institute specialising in research, science, and technology development for the forestry, wood product, wood-derived materials, and other biomaterial sectors, competed against Google Bay View by BIG and Heatherwick Studio in the United States.

According to Prof Jeremy Smith, Design Director of Irving Smith Architects in New Zealand, the award recognises the global significance of innovating ways to sustainably engage with the wider environment through our renewable timber resources. “It all feels rather amazing from far, far away.”

The award is just one of a line of international awards he and Andrew Irving have received for Scion. Previous honours include the World Timber Building of the Year and the World Higher Education and Research Building of the Year awards, received at the World Architecture Festival in 2020/2021. They were also honoured as the laureates of the Eurasian Prize for Architecture in 2021 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. In the US, they received the Best of Best MasterPrize Award for Green Buildings during the MasterPrize Awards in 2021, as well as The Building Award at the Indo-Pacific INDE Awards in Sydney, Australia. The Architizer World Architecture + Wood Winner title was also secured at the Architizer A+ Awards in the US in 2021.

Prof Smith, a partner in a niche architecture practice specialising in sensitive environments (based in Nelson, New Zealand), is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Prof Jonathan Noble, Head of the Department of Architecture at the UFS, expressed pride in being associated with a New Zealand-based architect whose multi-award success continues to promote the international profile of the department’s research and teaching programme. Prof Noble is also pleased to announce that Prof Smith will present this year’s ‘Sophia Gray Mini Conference’ on Thursday 19 August, the morning prior to the 35th Sophia Gray Memorial Lecture and Exhibition.

First embodied carbon zero-certified building in New Zealand

Prof Smith says the design was inspired by the desire to invite the community to be part of the research institute’s activities. “The building welcomes the community with the entire ground floor open to the public, featuring a café, display area, reception and meeting rooms. Live science takes place on the floors above, surrounding the three-story atrium. The structure serves as an invitation to walk in our forest, be part of the future, and witness the possibilities timber can offer,” he says.

He explains that around the innovations in timber structure, they developed a fritted glazed perimeter that allows the interior light to continually change as if under a forest canopy. The patterning on the glass refers to the local indigenous and exotic trees in the nearby forests and works sustainably to cut out the solar gain entering the building.

In the architectural process, Irving Smith Architects also consulted with the local indigenous people of the land. The community’s involvement is reflected in the three peaks of the entry, representing the three tribal groups and the three sacred mountains in the area. Including people in his designs is one of the aspects Prof Smith enjoys most about his work. “Architecture is about people. The best buildings have wonderful people in them. Helping is a joy,” he states.

Explaining about the award-winning building, Prof Smith says it is a live demonstration of timber structure and the first embodied carbon zero-certified building in New Zealand. “It is an important step in our country becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The approximately 500 m³ of structural timber in the building is regrown every 35 minutes in New Zealand,” he states, shedding light on the structure that is the entry to the New Zealand Government’s SCION Timber Research Institute in Rotorua.

In terms of sustainability, Prof Smith remarks that the answer in anything sustainable is not to use more, but to use less. “We should be making less-mass timber structural buildings.”

He continues, “With Dunning Thornton engineers, we innovated a timber structural diagrid that allows the loads to pass continuously through all-timber nodes in much the same way as the strength of a tree follows the grain. This simple shift in thinking reduced the timber sizes by 75%, and of course, by being smaller, timber is easier to resource, transport, fabricate, construct, and ultimately change. The smaller timber size suggests we use more timber in more timber buildings rather than more timber in selected timber buildings, which makes being carbon-better more achievable.”

Innovating ways to sustainably engage with the wider environment

Feedback from the jury on the project stated, “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.”

His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Second Deputy Ruler of Dubai, honoured the winners in a media release about the event, explaining that the Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development, organised by the Dubai Municipality in collaboration with United Nations-Habitat, recognises and supports the most innovative global concepts, initiatives, and practices that enhance resilience, quality of life, and the global living environment, thereby positively influencing the development of future cities.

Bin Mohammed commended all the recipients of awards, stating that it has successfully served as a global platform for stimulating creative minds and inspiring individuals to design more innovative and ground-breaking solutions that contribute to building the cities of the future. “Furthermore, this award has been instrumental in constructing inclusive communities with sustainable and integrated health, food, environmental systems, as well as digital and smart engineering infrastructure, helping to provide the best quality of life and well-being for future generations,” he added.

The Dubai International Best Practices Award for Sustainable Development attracted almost 3 000 entries from around the world.