Eight Awards for Gascoigne Associates at the 2010 RED Retail Design Awards

Mark Gascoigne might not be a household name, but chances are Mark’s designs and those of his award winning team at Gascoigne Associates will have had a significant effect on the bank balance of thousands of households throughout the country.

With clients including fashion juggernauts Glassons, Hallensteins and Rodd & Gunn, boutique Hotel DeBrett, fresh providore Nosh, Telecom, Placemakers, Pumpkin Patch, Toyota and more, it is safe to assume that every New Zealander (and many Australians) at some point will have visited and most probably purchased a product or service from a Gascoigne designed store.

This contribution was again confirmed at the annual RED Awards (formally the Retail Design Awards), held on Saturday 29th May at the Maritime Museum in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour. Gascoigne Associates ended up walking away with eight of the 18 awards, including an Overall Winner award.

Designed in conjunction with Saatchi Design Worldwide, Gascoigne Associates was one of the Division Winners in the ‘Group Award, Leisure’ category for the Telecom Botany retail space which also won the ‘Sign of the Times, Brand Application Award’ with brand applications by Designworks. The space was awarded as a “great example of brand integration into all the components of the store design,” RED Awards judges said.

In ‘Group Award, Personal’ they picked up Division Winner for Wild Pair Dunedin.
And in the ‘Group Award, Nourishment’ category, Gascoigne Associates took out both Division Winner titles for Nosh Mt Eden and the Hotel DeBrett Atrium (this project previously also won the 2009 New Zealand Architecture Award and Auckland Architecture Heritage category Award for Hotel de Brett in association with Mitchinson Simiona Limited).

But it was the radical redesign of Glassons Riccarton that really impressed the judges awarding Gascoigne Associates one of the Division Winners and Overall Winner in the ‘Group Award, Personal’ category, as well as winning the ‘Interface NZ Flooring Award’ for the patterned floor – a key contributing part of the overall design.

Judges comments on the Glassons space were that it was great response to the brief, creating a look with verve and personality. “The neutral colour palette works well for the merchandising of apparel and the display features enhance the eclectic chic; making the store and the product more desirable. It is a clever, appealing and unique retail response by a designer who clearly knows the market.”

Mark Gascoigne, Principal and Architect for Gascoigne Associates is delighted with the result. “First of all a big thank you to the contractors and suppliers we’ve worked with on these projects and also to the RED judges – to win this haul of awards is a fantastic acknowledgement for us, but it is also an accolade for our clients who see the importance of effective retail design and have the bravery to commit to groundbreaking new concepts.”

Gascoigne Associates was established 22 years ago and has grown into a multi-disciplinary design firm with senior designers from the fields of architecture, interior design, graphic design, lighting design, furniture design and colour consulting. And with these recent RED Award accolades there are many more boundaries to be pushed and retail spaces to be designed. Watch this space!

For more information on Gascoigne Associates visit: www.gascoigne.co.nz