Rewi Thompson

[1] "His exceptional talents became immediately apparent to staff and fellow students," wrote Deidre Brown in an obituary in the journal Architecture New Zealand.

[2][6] Thompson believed that architecture could heal the wairua (spirit) of people in difficult circumstances, including inmates at the Ngawha correctional facility in Northland.

[9] Thompson also worked on the Boehringer Ingelheim Office & Warehouse (1989), a number of marae in Auckland such as Ngāti Ōtara, Ruapōtaka, a marae-themed Māori mental health unit at the Mason Clinic, Kaitaia Hospital and Tiahomai at Middlemore.

Thompson's Fish Canopy was constructed in 1987 by Aronui Trust Carvers at the Whaiora Marae, and installed at Ōtara Town Centre, Auckland.

[10] In 1989 Thompson, Ian Athfield and Frank Gehry collaborated on a competition entry to design the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.

[11] "[A] relationship with the harbour was what appeared to explicitly inform the Thompson-Athfield-Gehry project which was arranged as a loose assemblage of buildings under a single transparent feather roof.

His work in designing rehabilitative structures for the incarcerated or the mentally unwell was radical and humane and is still shaping the way these facilities are created today [in New Zealand]," wrote Jeremy Hansen.

The Scholarship is funded by Architectus, whose founders, Patrick Clifford, Malcolm Bowes and Michael Thomson were friends and working colleagues of Thompson.