Architect and academic Professor Deidre Brown has won Te Kāhui Whaihanga, the New Zealand Institute of Architects’ highest honour: the gold medal for 2023.
The institute said Brown [Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu] who works at the University of Auckland, was the first academic and the first Māori woman to win the medal.
“The breadth of her work is impressive, encompassing architecture and art, history and housing, culture and craft. Through teaching, research, writing, art curation, leadership and mentoring, Deidre has touched the lives of many. Her sphere of influence is so far-reaching that it’s impossible to define,” the institute citation said.
In 2019, she was appointed head of the university’s school of architecture, 30 years after she began studying there to become an architect.
Brown is now deputy dean of the faculty of creative arts and industries.
“She continues to make an astounding contribution to architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand. As she says, with architecture you can change the world one building at a time but in teaching you can change it through 100-plus graduates a year,” the institute said.
Last year, Brown established the Māori and Pacific Housing Research Centre, which supports people living in healthy, affordable and sustainable homes. She co-directs that centre with former student Dr Karamia Müller.
The gold medal honours architects who consistently achieve the highest standards. Recipients are regarded as having made an outstanding contribution to the practice of architecture, demonstrated through a consistently high-quality body of work over a period of time.
The university said Brown’s specialist teaching, supervisory and research interests are Māori and Pacific architectural and art history, housing and the broader discipline of indigenous design.
She will give a series of free lectures:
- Thursday, May 2 at 4pm, The Cargo Shed, Tauranga;
- Thursday, May 9 at 12.30pm, James Hay Theatre, Christchurch;
- Wednesday, May 15 at 12.30pm, Viaduct Events Centre, Auckland;
- Friday, May 17 at 4pm, Motorcycle Mecca, Invercargill;
- Thursday, May 23, 12.30pm, St James Theatre, Wellington;
- Friday, May 24 at 4pm, Massey University Refectory Building, Palmerston North;
- Friday, June 7 at 4pm, Trafalgar Centre, Nelson;
- Friday, June 14 at 4pm, Municipal Building, Hastings.
Nicholas Stevens and Gary Lawson, of Parnell’s Stevens Lawson, won the gold medal for 2022. That was the first time it went to two people.
Julie Stout, of Mitchell Stoutt Dodd in Devonport, previously won the gold medal.
Dave Strachan, the now-late Jeremy Salmond, Andrew Patterson, Roger Walker, Stuart Gardyne and Patrick Clifford have been other gold medal recipients.
This month, the Herald reported how Auckland-based architectural graduate Elisapeta Heta, of Jasmax, featured in a new book on the world’s top female architects and was subsequently named in a group of visionaries shaking up the sector internationally.
The book, 100 Women: Architects in Practice by Tom Ravenscroft, Monika Parrinder, Naomi House and Harriet Harriss features architects from around the world.
But Heta [Ngātiwai, Waikato Tainui] is the only architectural graduate from Aotearoa to feature in the book.
The Guardian also featured her in an article ‘I get looks of disbelief’: the visionary women shaking up architecture worldwide, along with many other architects profiled in the book.
The Jasmax principal and Māori design leader helped found the Waka Māia team at her work to embed Māori principles in how practice designs buildings and structures.
Brown said she had supervised Hata’s final-year project at Auckland University which was a collapsable fale for Polyfest.
“I later persuaded her to return for a master’s thesis with me and Ngarino Ellis on Māori art collectives and we’ve always stayed in touch,” Brown said of Heta.