NZ buildings in running for top award

An impression of the Ice Hotel, a proposed Queenstown project, the work of Auckland's RTA Studio and Spi.rus.

A giraffe house, art gallery, Grey Lynn shops and apartment building are in the running for a top international architectural award.

A diverse group of New Zealand projects are finalists in the 2013 World Architecture Festival awards, due to be announced in Singapore in early October.

Two practices each have two entries.

Auckland's RTA Studio's is for a cluster of shops in Grey Lynn's Mackelvie St and for a proposed Queenstown project, Ice Hotel, designed in collaboration with another architectural firm, Spi.rus. Nelson's Irving Smith Jack Architects is on the shortlist for the Whakatane Library and Exhibition Centre and a house at Alexandra in Central Otago.

Sydney firm FJMT and New Zealand practice Archimedia have been shortlisted for their work on the Auckland Art Gallery. Those firms won an Institute of Architects' Auckland regional award in 2011, with their work lauded as a beautiful restoration and additions to an important civic landmark handled in a quiet, confident manner.

Glamuzina Paterson Architects and Hamish Monk Architecture are finalists for their giraffe house at Auckland Zoo. Their brief was to design new breeding facilities and keeper areas for animal handlers.

Ian Moore Architects is shortlisted for its work on an apartment building at 387 Tamaki Drive.

A monastery in Taiwan, a treehouse in the United States and a research station in Antarctica are also among the 302 projects on the shortlist for the awards.

John Walsh, NZ Institute of Architects communications manager, said it was a major accomplishment for seven projects from New Zealand to be finalists. The event attracted entries from the world's leading architecture practices, all of which would love to make the finals of the event, Walsh said.

"It's good to see that New Zealand architecture practices are footing it with international firms, and that the country is benefiting from world-class buildings."