Air New Zealand’s Hangar 4 has been named New Zealand’s top timber building of 2026, with the 98-metre mass-timber arch at Auckland Airport taking out the Resene Supreme Award at the NZ Timber Design Awards. That is according to Timber Unlimited, the industry body that hosts the awards, whose judges placed the Studio Pacific Architecture design ahead of a field spanning residential, commercial, public and engineering categories.
Judges singled out the hangar for pushing engineered timber to a scale rarely attempted in aviation, a building type long built in steel. Hangar 4 is “a benchmark achievement, demonstrating both innovation and exceptional engineering elegance,” the judges said.
Studio Pacific Architecture led the design across the 15,000-square-metre complex, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest single-span timber arch hangar, assembled from 7,141 prefabricated timber components and roughly 250,000 screws. The practice said the building is “a world-first in large-scale timber design,” one built to be both resilient and climate-positive.
Built from laminated veneer lumber and cross-laminated timber supplied by New Zealand producers Nelson Pine and XLam, the arches span about 98 metres and rise 35 metres without a single internal column. Sized to house a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner alongside two Airbus A320 or A321 jets, the building covers around 1.5 times the floor area of Air New Zealand’s largest existing facility and slots in beside live airside operations at the Auckland base.
Contractor NZ Strong built the arch to flex up to 300 millimetres under earthquake loads, absorbing shock rather than fighting it in one of the world’s most demanding seismic regions. Its project manager, Jimmy Corric, told last year’s Timber Construct conference the seismic structure “can wobble about in the breeze,” the timber giving way where a rigid steel frame would resist.
An ETFE roof brings daylight into the hangar and traps enough heat to remove the need for a conventional heating system. More than 780 cubic metres of cross-laminated timber and 580 cubic metres of laminated veneer lumber went into the build, storing carbon that a steel frame would otherwise have released.
Now in their 51st year, the awards drew the sector to a two-part gala at Auckland’s Cordis Hotel, where guests helped decide a new live People’s Choice award on the night. Timber Unlimited said wild weather grounded flights, with some guests driving from Wellington after cancellations rather than miss the celebration.
Friday’s Supreme Award caps a run of recognition for the hangar, which opened in September when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon cut the ribbon on the project he first commissioned in 2019 as the airline’s chief executive.
Hangar 4 has since entered full service as the world’s largest aircraft hangar built from mass timber, the centrepiece of Air New Zealand’s widebody maintenance. The New Zealand Institute of Architects named it a winner in its Auckland commercial category this year, with further honours from the Property Council and Master Builders.
