The evening
The awards evening was held on 13 April 2021 in the Sir Paul Reeves Building at AUT City Campus, with AUT as host. ArchitectureNow reported the winners. He promoted the event among colleagues and the wider community as one of the School’s leaders in the field.
The relationship
The New Zealand Green Building Council is the country’s leading organisation for sustainable buildings, responsible for the Green Star rating tool and the Homestar residential standard. The School’s relationship with the Council runs through several of the entries in this record: the Built Futures showcase for World Green Building Week in 2019, NZGBC’s participation in Smart Cities Week, and his own credentials as a Green Star Accredited Professional.
Hosting the Council’s awards brings the green building sector onto campus and puts students in the same room as the practitioners they will join. For a School whose research centres on sustainable, digital and intelligent built environments, those connections are part of how teaching stays current.
Why host such events
Hosting sector events is a modest but effective form of engagement. It brings professionals onto campus who might otherwise rarely visit, shows them the School’s facilities and people, and creates informal connections that lead to guest lectures, student projects, research partnerships and employment. Over time, those connections are part of what keeps a professional school close to its industry.