ArchEngBuild winners 2023

August 2023 marked the 10th year of the ArchEngBuild Challenge, held in Wellington at the Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation | Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa on 29-31 August.

Participants collaborate in 10 teams of three respond to a real-life client brief addressing issues faced by industry and allowing the students to come up with creative and innovative solutions. Over 3 days, students heard from industry experts, visited exemplary sites and had specialist mentors available to provide advice and support along the way.

The challenge

Climate change is affecting New Zealand’s natural and built environments and our communities. In the coming decades, climate change will pose more and more of a challenge to the New Zealand way of life.

This year, students were asked to look at how climate change and its associated weather events require us to shift our thinking:

• How can we build and modify residential buildings to better cope with increased rainfall and fluctuating temperatures while minimising carbon footprints and cost?
• How we shift our thinking about what, how and where we build?
• How can we better adapt residential buildings to cope with a changing climate?
• How can we look at resilience through a different lens and build with nature rather than fight against it?
• How can resilient buildings keep to a smaller carbon footprint at the same or lower cost?

The winning students

• Mila Makasini, Architect from Otago Polytechnic.
• Aleksandr Bakharovskii, Construction Manager from Ara Institute of Canterbury
• Andrea Tang, Engineer from the University of Auckland