Dio student Piper Whitehead (Year 13) has won the top prize for Secondary School Students in New Zealand’s annual architectural writing competition.

Another student, Emma Uren, (Year 12), received one of three Highly Commended Awards.

The Architectural Writing Awards competition was established by the New Zealand Institute of Architects, and is supported by the educational trust founded by the eminent New Zealand architect, Sir Miles Warren.

New Zealand Institute of Architects spokesperson John Walsh said there was a great response to this year’s competition, in which writers were invited to discuss architectural sites of personal significance to them.

“The purpose of the awards is to promote longer-form writing about architecture,” Walsh said. “We want to encourage writers, especially younger writers, to try their hand at essay writing, which requires the careful crafting and compelling expression of a personal viewpoint.”

The Awards were judged by a panel comprising Nicola Legat, publisher at Massey University Press, Chris Barton, an architecture writer and teacher at the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning, and John Walsh, who is the Institute of Architects’ Communications Manager.

The essay by Secondary school category winner Piper Whitehead also integrated a family narrative with the story of the eccentric Coromandel house built by her grandfather.

“Piper’s essay is a fond and humorous appreciation of a very imperfect house, and the idiosyncratic man who constructed it,” the jury said.

The Institute will include 10 of the 2017 Architectural Writing Awards essays, including the winning and highly commended essays, in a book that will be published in early 2018.