We’re thrilled to be named a finalist in the 2025 Architizer Awards, in the Modeling + Rendering category for our Lakeview project!
The brief, from property developers 94 Feet, was ambitious from the outset: a multi-billion-dollar development on the edge of one of New Zealand's most breathtaking lakes. But ambition alone doesn't make a place feel like home. What makes Te Taumata different is philosophy — a quiet, cohesive one, built on sustainability, neighbourly intent, and the art of experiential placemaking. Every corner of the project, from the ground-floor shopfronts to the twelfth storey, carries that same intent.
The architecture, led by Monk Mackenzie and Architectus, gave us elegant, considered interiors to work with — spaces that already understood their surroundings. Our role was to extend that language further, layering in furnishing and styling that would draw the eye through each room and out toward the landscape beyond. On one side, the lake stretches out in silence. On the other, dense forest presses close. Every residence sits between the two, breathing in a little of both.
Then came the façades — stone-wrapped, grounded, folding seamlessly from the exterior into the interior spaces below: the shops, the restaurants, the co-living building, and the four residential towers rising above them, the tallest reaching twelve storeys into the Queenstown sky. Bringing these to life meant finding the balance between weight and warmth, between a building that commands attention and one that still feels like it belongs to its landscape.
It's this balance — between scale and intimacy, stone and softness, ambition and place — that carried Te Taumata | Lakeview all the way to a finalist placing in the 2025 Architizer Awards, Modeling + Rendering category.
We're incredibly proud of this one. Being recognised alongside the best modelling and rendering work from around the world is a reflection of every hour spent getting the light, the texture, and the atmosphere just right — and of the trust placed in us by an exceptional team of collaborators.