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Dulux Colour Awards 2023

Dulux Colour Awards 2023

Grand Prix

Our expert judges have recognised this project as having best displayed a creative and innovative use of colour across residential, commercial and public spaces in New Zealand for 2023.

Learn more about the awards
St James Theatre by Dulux Colour Awards 2023 New Zealand Grand Prix winner Shand Shelton. Photograph: Paul McCredie.

New Zealand Grand Prix Winner

Shand Shelton


St James Theatre

Congratulations to Shand Shelton as the Dulux Colour Awards 2023 New Zealand Grand Prix winner. The organisation has been recognised as the outstanding New Zealand project and commended in the Commercial Interior – Public and Hospitality category.

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About the project

The heritage-listed St James Theatre is Wellington’s premier lyric theatre and home to the Royal New Zealand Ballet. The 1912 building was identified as earthquake-prone in 2015, instigating the project to increase the complex’s overall strength.

The result was a fully integrated strengthening and conservation project with the theatre’s operational systems and targeted upgrades made throughout.

Due to its heritage value, artistic samples were applied in situ when finalising the colour scheme with adjustments made to consider authenticity, reflectivity values, and light balance to ensure the scheme would perform under actual theatre conditions.

What the judges said

“The revitalisation of the St James Theatre is a celebration of craftsmanship and a gift to the community. The significance of the undertaking was potentially daunting and there were undoubtedly ‘safer’ strategies, but the architects have embraced the challenge, specifying a complex palette, inspired by early drawings of the heritage-listed building. Prioritising an investment in artisans to execute the intricate colour scheme has paid off, for this attention to detail has achieved optimal authenticity and light balance for theatre conditions. These artistic effects enhance the intricate plasterwork within the auditorium, while blushes of rich colours and metallics strategically accentuate the proscenium arch and stage. By contrast, the foyer spaces adopt a neutral colour scheme to emphasise the building’s materiality, with feature colours reserved for focal points. It is an impressive display of colour conceptualisation and workmanship.”

Inside St James Theatre

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The palette

The inspiration for the colour scheme took queues from an article from 1912 that described impressions of the auditorium scheme on opening day. Artistic effects were applied to enhance the opulence in the intricate plasterwork embellishments that decorate the auditorium.

Cardrona Double

St Clair Half

Waitoa

Manorburn Half

Mt Aspiring Half

Little Manly Double

Tōtaranui Half

Foundation Half

Ecru Quarter

Waiau Bay Half

Tōrere Quarter

Ōpononi Half

Waitangi

Matamata

Balsam Pear

Gold Vintage

Nile Street

Pink Marble

Trentham

Blossoming Rose

Pigeon Pink

Rosewood

Greek Lavender

Lake Tarawera

Sheltered Bay

Warm Granite

The Remarkables

Waitara Beach

Piha

Australian Grand Prix Winner

Sibling Architecture


Darebin Intercultural Centre

Congratulations to Sibling Architecture as the Dulux Colour Awards 2023 Australian Grand Prix winner. The company was recognised as the best-in-class in Australia for its design of the Darebin Intercultural Centre in Preston, Victoria. Sibling Architecture also won the Commercial Interior – Public and Hospitality category for this project.

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About the project

The Darebin Intercultural Centre is a new community facility established to foster meaningful and constructive interracial, intercultural, and interfaith relations between people who live, work and play in the City of Darebin, in Melbourne's inner north.

Built within the Darebin Civic Centre, the intercultural centre is dedicated to the elimination of racism and discrimination in all its forms for the community by providing a safe space where connections and fearless dialogue can occur.

The material palette is deliberately diverse with exposed brick, local timber, and the use of mirrors to reflect the community back onto itself and to remind people of their importance in inhabiting the spaces. Soft and hard spaces clash with natural materials and colour to create a symbiosis that fuses the spaces together.

Extensive community consultation was key for this project, which included a Community Reference Group comprised of culturally diverse community members and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung elders who helped co-design and steer the project.

What the judges said

“This programmatically ambitious project truly represents everything that the Dulux Colour Awards program is about; it pushes the boundaries and creates precedence, not only in its colour usage but its typology. Its fundamental concept to create a communal facility to foster interracial, intercultural and interfaith relations presented a host of challenges. The deliberate avoidance of any recognisable cultural representation placed greater importance on the form and material palette, and we applaud the strong tie to the brief, achieved through the push and pull of colour and texture. Although the use of colour to define spaces is a tangible device, in this project, colour is also highly emotive, encouraging interaction and inclusion. The idea is brilliant, and the delivery is impressive, with contrasting colours representing the diverse community, balanced to achieve a cohesive, restrained result. We frequently talk about colour being metaphoric, but this is much more than that; it is timely, powerful and the epitome of architecture’s capacity to foster positive human relations.”

The winning palette

The design of this space was intentionally agnostic to recognisable representations of specific cultures in order to represent all community members. Curvaceous forms throughout the space were painted in Dulux colours as a gesture to the idea of drawing all cultures and the community into the centre. The use of colour to define spaces within the project was an important mechanism and critical to the success of these gestures, being applied to acoustic ceilings, walls, joinery, window frames and doors throughout.

Circus

Orange X15

After Burn

Schweppes Yellow

Kowloon

Lime Fizz

Slimlime

Green Glacier Quarter

Private Tone

Recuperate Quarter

First Love Quarter

Southern Alps

Inside Darebin Intercultural Centre

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Dulux Colour Awards category winners

Explore how the winners brought to life the innovative use of colour across six areas spanning interior and exterior residential, public, and commercial spaces.

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