Following on from my posts on the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards & And the Winner is… here is the official press release for the Awards.

On Friday night I had the great pleasure of presenting the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards.

In summary the judges were most impressed:

Again this year, the standard has been high and the jury was impressed with the strong and compelling quality of the verbal presentations and the professionalism of finalists in what can be a nerve-wracking situation. We saw a diverse array of presentations over the two days ranging from those firmly rooted in the best traditions of architecture to more theoretical speculations that questioned the boundaries of the discipline itself. The winner, however, stood out in terms of strong theoretical exploration with great breadth and depth. The scheme excelled on multiple levels from its proposition right through to the detailed resolution of the work.

However, there can only be one winner and that was Simon Harrison from Victoria University:

Urban Neighbours

Encouraging formation of a genuine neighbourhood in a high-rise inner city apartment building through inclusion of quality ‘in between’ spaces and design measures that allow a diverse range of inhabitants.

Juror’s Comments

A compelling investigation of physical, social and commercial aspects of architecture, taking a fresh look at private, public and in-between realms of high rise, high-density living.

The Highly Commended Prize was awarded to a joint entry from Sebastian Hamilton & Barrington Gohns of Auckland University:

Other Than Human

This highly interactive project explores sensory engagement and seeks to develop a new means of spatial engagement. It uses different technologies and tools including ‘the haptic’ to centre the user in their environment.

Juror’s Comments

Good engagement in different skill sets and disciplines, a high degree of resolution in built outcome and presentation and an exemplary process of mediating between theoretical propositions about spatial engagement and working at one-to-one scale.

Over the last two days 12 students from Auckland University, Unitec and Victoria University have been presenting their final year project as part of the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards.

Graphisoft New Zealand is extremely proud to be the sponsor of this event and I have enjoyed attending a number of the presentations.

The presentation quality of this years awards is outstanding. The diverse range of schemes from the Porosity of Architecture to Extra Sensory Experiences of Architecture to a collapsible Whare  is certain to make the judging interesting.

Tonight is the official award ceremony where one student will be picked as the best in New Zealand –  I have chosen my winner but having not attended all the presentations I could well be (and most likely will be) wrong!

Congratulations must be extended to all 12 finalists as reaching this stage is a fantastic success in itself:

2009 Finalists:

UNITEC Department of Architecture

Callum Dowie

Alisha Patel

Jayshree Magan

Elisabeth Tryland

AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY – School of Architecture and Planning

Sebastian Hamilton

Barrington Gohns

Lyannie Tran

John Hawkins

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON – Faculty of Architecture and Design

Daniel Davis

Simon Harrison

Charlotte Hoare

Frances Vessey

UNITEC Department of Architecture

• Callum Dowie
• Alisha Patel
• Jayshree Magan
• Elisabeth Tryland

AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY – School of Architecture and Planning

• Sebastian Hamilton
• Barrington Gohns
• Lyannie Tran
• John Hawkins

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON – Faculty of Architecture and Design

• Daniel Davis
• Simon Harrison
• Charlotte Hoare
• Frances Vessey

Twitter is certainly getting a huge amount of hype at the moment as it makes the transition from gimmick to becoming a core part of  business and their social marketing plan.

Twitter to many seems like a waste of time and as many tweets revolve around what I ate for breakfast or what my dog just did. As a result of this and not surprisingly there is a lot of scepticism as to whether Twitter is a fad and how long will it last. I myself have times where I tweet a lot and then days go by without a single tweet.

Many smart businesses are now finding that Twitter is a great tool to communicate with customers, make offers and answer support questions. This is based on Twitters ability to connect quickly with a large audience that can see your messages on all types of devices from Internet cafes, to computers, to phones. While I cannot mention the exact number Andy Lark recently told me how much business Dell does via Twitter which was simply astounding.

While we are starting to use Twitter increasingly for our Cadimage Tools business (@cadimagetools) initially we have also found it beneficial as a way of receiving information. *

For those who want to read more here are some recent links that may be of interest:

Twitter 101

Twittering on about Business

Twitter marketing tool of the future

Seth Godin outlines on his blog he doesn’t have time to Twitter but does at least have his blog ‘hooked up’ to Twitter so that a Tweet is created everytime he posts a blog item.**

Twitter and Business

* There are many ways to receive Tweets I find Seesmic Desktop particularly good as I can easily create different lists or groups of tweets so I can easily review them.

** There are a number of ways of having Tweets automatically created when a blog article is published. I use Twitter Tools, Seth uses twitterfeed - there are many more but once set up it is a great way of publishing content to multiple sources in a simple and efficient way.

Last week I had a week off.

Based on the following I can’t imagine when Rod had any time off:

Rod Drury, Selwyn Pellett enter NZ Hi-Tech Hall of Fame

Rod Drury joins NZX board

Accelerate 2010

The great thing all of these have in common is that even while Rod is building a world class company he still has time to give back!

Great work Rod

Over the last few weeks I have been taking care of Customer Care for our Cadimage Tools International Customers. It is certainly a job where you get right down to the detail and consequently you may have noticed a drop off in my blog postings!

I have also fallen behind in reading everyone else’s blogs but I have come across a few things that are either great, cool, I agree with or just plain weird!

There is the recently released Dell Adamo which is a pretty cool looking, extremely thin laptop.

Xero has made two great announcements – Xero Personal and a massive increase in Revenues

Andy Lark has a good point about Rugby going global – it must be tough being in the US and not being able to watch the All Blacks. I also though his post on Critical Non Essentials was interesting.

There are the Mindflex puzzles where you use your brain power to move objects!

Lastly there is a post about 10 Secrets To Staying Informed About Web Design – I think this could help me keep up with all my blogs not just those on Web Design, but I haven’t yet had time to read it!