78 | Jasmax T T Virginia Wright AUT project an award winner for firm ARCHITECTURE Operating from studios across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, architecture and design practice Jasmax has been at the forefront of sustainable design in the Pacific for 60 years. For 23 of those years, Chris Scott has been part of their signature multi-disciplinary approach, blending architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and urban design. Through most of that time he’s been specialising in university buildings, working across multiple universities in New Zealand, prominent among them being AUT (Auckland University of Technology). He co-leads the Jasmax education team, which works on early childhood centres, schools, universities and polytechs, and he recently led the AUT Tukutuku project team that has just won the Education Award at the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) Auckland Architecture Awards 2025. “The AUT North Campus started as a teachers’ training college around 50 years ago and grew in a very ad hoc manner to be a series of disconnected separate buildings surrounded by car parks, so the experience of being on that campus was bad. There was no sense of place, no common spaces where everyone connects together. The campus had no heart.” Chris explains. “The Tukutuku project was developed following the key principle of developing a campus based around the student experience, which means being connected, being pedestrian friendly, but also creating attractive spaces where students can gather.” The team knew that students can attend lectures online with no obligation to be on campus, but if they are on campus they have a better experience and better academic results. “So we wanted to create spaces where students would enjoy being and connecting to others, but also focused around collaborative and social study. The longer they spend on campus the more time they spend socializing, but the more time they also spend studying and gaining from that peer-to-peer aspect as well,” Chris says. The Jasmax approach reflects that desired connectivity and collaboration, with a team of up to 20 architects and staff working on the Tukutuku project, bringing in the best ideas from throughout Jasmax, along with their skills. “As part of that collaboration we actually shared an office in the client’s building for six months, with all the consultants, the architects, the engineers, and the client, having daily conversations to put together the design of this building, with us all buying into the client’s aspirational brief: “To create a heart for the campus, which was highly attractive to both students and staff, to create a very sustainable, low-carbon, low-energy and high-health building, and to create flexibility and adaptability for all the future changing uses that the more designated, highly utilised learning spaces will experience.” Turning those words into a functioning, sustainable, award-winning building and surrounding spaces took three and a half years on top of the work developing the brief, Portrush Construction offers you a range of services with the aim of always delivering on time and to a top standard. Site Welding Services Temporary Works Steel Fabrication 027 2699 922 bruce@portrushconstruction.co.nz portrushconstruction.co.nz Proudly Supporting Jasmax Precast Install 021 0764 857 joshua@portrushconstruction.co.nz Contact Us!
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