Show Notes
Send us Fan Mail Pamela Bell, a trailblazer in New Zealand's architecture and construction scene, shares her inspiring journey from studying architecture to embracing prefabrication and entrepreneurial ventures. Pamela's story is not just about personal triumphs but also about innovating at the crossroads of design and business. Her narrative is a testament to the transformative power of networking and building meaningful connections, which she believes are crucial for success. Pamela's exper...
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Send us Fan Mail 2030 is not a distant milestone, it is already colliding with the reality of long design and construction timelines. We sit down with Ewan Brown, Director at Tenant Brown Architects, to unpack what NZIA’s Kaitiakitanga 2030 strategy is really asking of architects, and why “we’ll get to it later” quietly locks in decades of carbon, water use, and overheating risk across Aotearoa New Zealand. We dig into the practical heart of the strategy: moving beyond one-off “green” projec...
Send us Fan Mail Designing with people sounds like a slogan until you hear what it demands in real life. Recorded at the NZIA Institute Conference, we sit down with Sydney-based co-founders David Kaunitz and Ka Wai Yeung, whose practice has built an international reputation for socially responsible, culturally sensitive architecture with remote communities across Australia and the Pacific. The big idea is deceptively simple: stop designing for communities and start designing with them, even w...
Send us Fan Mail Two architects walk into a conference and we hand them a mic. What comes out is a fast, honest look at how New Zealand architects make decisions when nobody has time for fluff. We’re joined by Hamish McLachlan (Bowen and McLachlan Architects, also Architecture Zero Zero) and Rob Paulin (Paulin Studio), the two winners of our In:Situ ticket giveaway, for a quick-fire Q&A that turns into a surprisingly deep conversation about the design process and the built environment in ...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode we are talking with Dr Albert Refiti, professor at AUT and co-director of the Vā Moana Research Centre, about Vā: the relational space that holds people, culture, hierarchy, and belonging together. Once you hear Vā described this way, Pacific architecture stops being a set of shapes and starts reading like a living map of relationships across time. We dig into why key forms and spatial rules have stayed so consistent for roughly 3,000 years across Polynesia, ...
Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever wondered why New Zealand can’t seem to build medium density housing that feels calm, green, and genuinely liveable, this conversation puts a spotlight on the real blockers and the real opportunities. This episode we’re joined by Wellington architects Tim Gittos and Caro Robertson from Spacecraft Architects, fresh off winning the F. Gordon Wilson Fellowship for their research project DIY Density. We get specific about what “DIY” actually means here: not p...