Judges
Christopher
Kelly
Founding Principal
,Architecture Workshop
Christopher Kelly is the founding principal of Architecture Workshop. He was born in the Wairarapa on the East Coast of New Zealand and studied architecture at Victoria University, Wellington. He worked for Athfield Architects until NZ registration in 1984, then travelled through Asia to Europe where he was a guest student at the postgraduate Fine Arts Stadelschule in Frankfurt run by Prof Peter Cook. In 2008 he was invited to give an alumni keynote address and exhibit at the Frankfurt Deutsches Architektur Museum.
After stints with Denys Lasdun and Ian Ritchie in London, he spent 3 years in Italy and Japan working with Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the Kansai Air terminal. He returned to New Zealand in 1992 and established Architecture Workshop in Wellington. He collaborated with RPBW in Sydney 1997-2000 co- leading the RPBW Sydney office to design construct the CBD Aurora Place Tower and the Macquarie St residential building with Bovis Lend Lease. AW work is recognised and published both nationally and internationally. The Peregrine Winery in Otago was judged by the UK Architecture Review in 2004 as one of the world’s four best buildings by an emerging architect. The redesign of the Oriental Bay Beach in central Wellington, a joint venture for the Wellington City Council, was co-winner of the George Malcolm Supreme Landscape Award, and the 2006 NZIA supreme award for Urban Design. In 2011 Kelly won the New Zealand Architecture Medal for the Waitomo Glowworm Caves Visitors Centre. Kelly has been a guest tutor/lecturer at a range of Australian and NZ Universities, an NZIA national jury member in 2002 and a National Councilor 2003 -2005. He was a keynote speaker at the RAIA Sydney Conference in 2003, and a judge at the Inaugural World Architecture Festival in 2008 in Barcelona.