Gold medallists should make good dinner guests. After all, architecture is about people and so, too, are parties. There are, of course, many tables to life, and everyone sits a little differently. From the high to the low, kitchen to coffee, there’s conversations being tabled everywhere. Think boardrooms and boarding rooms, the wet and the dry, the palatial and primordial. Architecture, at its best, seats with anyone. Table or no table, architects, at their best, sit anywhere.

There’s an invitation in sitting, a recognition of value and a dialogue in collaboration. It is social in the sharing, creating in the finding, a team in the contribution. At its best, architecture is all party, and there’s a party in this.

Dine in a detail of architects, Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington buddies feathering around Whakatū Nelson, looking at architecture, sharing knowledge, finding adventure, having fun. As good things go, an afternoon house visit runs to the evening, there’s some kind of invitation, and seats and a dinner found. Picture the table, you might guess the cast of what must be the most practised practice group in the country. Amongst the party are Hugh and Ewan. What did we speak about that night? Who could remember, for architects, at their best, can also be fun.

Perhaps we spoke about people and landscape at Te Wharehou O Waikaremoana or immersing ourselves in Te Reo at Mana Tamariki. Maybe we got to sheltering activity indoors at the ASB Sports Centre or sports talking our way to the Basin Reserve or to taking up bowls in NaeNae? Quite likely there was some Spy Valley Winery sampling from Marlborough, and we might have remembered a house or two in the Moutere. Did we travel-story up to Gisborne, shop a little into David Jones or public sector our way to Bowen Campus? Hopefully the kōrero took us to carboning a Living Pā but, equally, we might have sought compassion from Island Bay, some Glenorchy Aro Ha or simply a dose of Bodhinyanarama mindfulness. The colloquy with Ewan and Hugh can go just about anywhere.

Yet, you know what? Could have, should have, would have, but probably didn’t. Because these two are as humble as they are golden. And surely that is the sign of architects completely at their best; that the reward aims everywhere but themselves.

It is an interesting question as to where architects best place their architecture. For some, architecture is of the architecture and locales a contextual exchange. For others, architecture is in the architecture and leads out a narrative. And then there are architects who conceive architecture for the architecture, that is, for the conversate; for people.

On a recent adventure, we found ourselves at Futuna in Wellington, marvelling again at the colloquiality of a space that never ceases to impart something, no matter your leaning or story. John Scott, surely a hero of all architects down here and at the end of all our far far away rainbows, referred to himself as “just an architect sorting out problems and trying to say what is relevant to our time.” It is a lovely conversational line that Bill McKay and Julia Gatley tease out in their introductory essay in David Straight’s book on Scott, for it speaks to community and contribution. Similar ubiquitous plating runs to the work of Tennent Brown, for their work is observational to people, our people. It speaks to their even embodiment in planning space out to the technical. Never short of detailing in the new, they do so to materialise us to a language that we can all ease into. They take us to the holistic.

That’s no mean feat, for architecture seems to be increasingly fixated on appearances and narrowing the understanding of what architecture is. Reversing those ever-decreasing circles and sending the gyre sustainably outwards offers the promise of more and the real. You can hear the reassurance, honesty and contribution in their work. For, like any good community, it talks openly.

Tennent Brown’s architecture is clear, precise and yet free. It’s technical and inventive, sustaining and grounded, and as happy remote as it is close. For it chats with its community and can do so in any language. At its best, architecture in our country is for mana whenua and for all the people of Aotearoa. At our best, we encourage Hugh and Ewan to sit anywhere.

Dinner parties at the ready. Everywhere.

Tēnā kōrua.