When I first moved to New Zealand – even after living in some of the highest-priced US property markets – I was taken aback by house prices.
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The under-representation of Māori across professions responsible for shaping the natural and built environments of Aotearoa is ubiquitous, and landscape architecture is no exception.
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The land is what makes us unique as tangata whenua and tangata tiriti. It is the land that provides the knowledge, stories and tools to create and bring life into the places we live.
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If we look at the history of the landscape of Aotearoa through the lens of a Māori perspective, there are spiritual connections, beliefs and traditions that make up the framework with which Māori live by and have been accustomed to for hundreds of years.
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The moral and business case for diversity and inclusion is stronger than ever, with research proving the positive effect on employee wellbeing, creativity and innovation; all these things lead to better design.
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Jessica Tregidga is in her first year of a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, with a prior Diploma in Architectural Technology. She’s doing ‘The Landscapes of Aotearoa’ course at Unitec, which looks into how the past is influencing the present, and how we can provide for the future landscapes of Aotearoa.
When you talk about New Zealand with a person like myself who was born overseas, the first impression they will have will be the rolling green hills, blue rivers, majestic mountains, diversity of landscape from one island to another, Maori culture, and history. Those are the things that are always symbolic for New Zealand, and marketing of New Zealand overseas reflects this as the "Brand of New Zealand".
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Social media can be a wonderful tool for bringing people together in a common cause. It can also be a seedbed and spreader of mis-information on a community-wide scale. Which camp Is the debate around the Erebus Memorial in Auckland in?
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The devil may well be in the detail but on the face of it the Government plans for reformation of the Resource Management Act look promising says independent researcher, Dr Diane Menzies.
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What has COVID-19 told us about the way we’re living and how we need to change? LAA asked landscape architects how the global pandemic has influenced the way they think about the profession going forward.
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Landscapes of extraction are the undeniably baneful result of a global resource-exploitation economy, yet they are readily denied by policymakers and governmental bodies as having value beyond being ‘green-washed’.
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If very small urban plantings are unlikely to provide important habitat, why plant natives at all? Boffa Miskell’s Christchurch-based botanist Dr Jaz Morris explores some broad questions of ecological pedantry in small-scale plantings in the urban environment.
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“It looks like security measures for terror.” That’s the scathing verdict of Bill McKay on Auckland’s Queen Street.
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This visionary tactical master plan is an initiative by Isthmus to provide a framework for innovative change. It supports the work of many different groups advocating for a more people friendly Wellington.
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Urban life is sustained by infrastructure. New Zealand’s development and economic future is dependent upon said infrastructure to collect, exchange, and distribute goods, people, services and kaupapa (knowledge) across vast territories.
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My enduring memory of Orlando in July 2005 was of the stifling heavy heat that made venturing outside an exercise in endurance.
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Public space is a city’s literal common ground - the spaces where people come together as friends, neighbours and citizens.
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It was the last weekend of my break in Orlando and my sister-in-law suggested a trip to a local university. She mentioned that there were a few buildings there designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which sounded interesting to explore.
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Isthmus’ Brennan Baxley responds to an installation by Austrian eco-visionary designer Klaus Loenhart at Victoria University of Wellington, along with the lecture titled Imagine! The city as a living biome.
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As the phrase “shovel-ready” enters New Zealand’s vocabulary, it’s worth pausing to think about what those words really mean.
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