Te Aratai College, a rebuild of the former Linwood College, in East Christchurch, won the Ted McCoy Award for Education in the 2023 Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects national awards programme. The new school blocks featured windows from multiple commercial suites from the APL Window Solutions portfolio, manufactured and installed by Vantage manufacturer Hagley Windows and Doors.

The NZIA award citation said that the school design, “answers the needs of a diverse community with a layout that seamlessly links individual learning paths and community spaces. Its layout features two distinct courtyard spaces (each with its own identity), linked by an ‘avenue of learning’, and it caters to students’ individual needs while promoting a sense of belonging.” The school was an “exceptional project,” said the citation, planned after deep community consultation. Its design saw features reflecting cultural values, featuring the inclusion of a Wharenui Maori language and tikanga space.

A major design feature of several buildings were raking, full height glazed facades in the APL 150mm Flushglaze system. In one building the gable-end peak was nearly 16m high with a facade width of 20.5m.

With some school buildings designed quite wide, there was a need for the inclusion of large, high-level clerestory-type windows in a number of places. A high-level strip window 23m-long in the 100mm Flushglaze system is a feature of one building, while in another block two large dormer-type windows were included in the roof line to bring generous light into void areas. A large proportion of the opening windows in the school complex are on electronic openers controlled by climate sensors.

Vertical aluminium sun fins were included on the exterior of some facades for solar control purposes and these were powdercoated with an Electro ‘Sensational Champagne’ finish, in contrast to the Duratec ‘Matt Ironsand’ used on all other APL windows and doors at Te Aratai College. Double glazing, including solar control glass and Argon gas fill, was used in most places.

The builder was Southbase Construction.