Hugh Tennent: At the time of meeting Ewan in 2002, I had a couple of staff doing residential work, plus educational and spiritually focused projects. Prior to that, I had engaged with building in the middle of my architecture degree, pursued Buddhist meditative practices globally and worked for Structon Group. After travelling extensively, I designed and constructed the Buddhist Monastery in Stokes Valley in the early ’90s. Whilst enjoying collaborations with colleagues — Bevin Slessor on Seatoun School and Spy Valley winery, and Jonathan Waddy on winery projects — I was quietly on the lookout to find someone to work with closely and grow the practice.

Ewan joined in 2003 with extensive experience in large commercial projects and skills I was lacking. We shared similar values in gravitating to projects that uplift people and community. Neither of us wanted to grow a practice just to be big, yet we wanted to do larger work. It didn’t take long for me to realise it would be best to work together in collaboration…

Together, we have been practising for 22 years, creating work from a moderately sized office that has been able to make projects often above our scale. We have mutually supported each other to enable the strongest contribution to the work, the office and the built environment. Receiving the Gold Medal is confirmation that our differing yet complementary voices have developed with a synergy, making it clear the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The work of the practice is characterised by seeking to uplift the human experience through engagement with the building and its ground, to be a positive force in its context and support its purpose.

My role is design director; Ewan is sustainability design director and managing director. Together, we are drawn to projects that benefit community in its many expressions, and in which we seek to influence the impacts of making on natural systems upon which our life depends.

There are common threads connecting the work: often, the use of timber in our wooded land, a warmth of habitation and enclosure, and an exploration of form which makes for a discernible character. These formal responses are unique to each project, born from research and synthesising of the many facets to arrive at a central conceptual framework to scaffold the design journey. This conceptual basis can be expressive of many things: a cultural idea or story, an innovative structural approach, an extraordinary site and its geomorphology, and so on. Ideally, when complete, the project invites curiosity and response, and support and enjoyment for those who use it.

Adopting a fresh approach to each project often requires invention — one of the many joys and challenges of architecture. We have a team used to the unfamiliar yet which draws from much experience. The most recent significant project, Ngā Mokopuna for Te Herenga Waka Marae at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, has required much invention and innovation to respond to the dual aims of uplifting matauranga Māori at the university whilst undertaking the Living Building Challenge (LBC). For this project, Ewan’s passion and unwavering commitment to the LBC has been a massive achievement, supported by many in our team.

This project exemplifies other major threads of our work: kaupapa Māori projects and the challenge of regenerative sustainability. We have been working on kaupapa Māori projects for 22 years and this journey has affected us both. From Pākehā backgrounds, we’ve woken up to the legacy of colonialism for Māori and been invited to contribute to the much-needed work of repairing, uplifting and rangatiratanga. For myself, this is an ongoing journey of te reo Māori, of listening and researching, of enjoyment, and of challenge and contribution. It is also a journey we have supported across the practice.

Designing for kaupapa Māori projects is a joy — the relationships and aspiration for the understanding that buildings have voice, the valuing of being kaitiaki and of collaboration. The mahi requires careful listening; it requires us to kōrero and to sing. Architecturally, each project initially appears as an apparent blank page but one that is suffused by moemoeā (vision), pūrākau (legend), whakairo (pattern) and whakapapa (lineage). Finding form that resonates is, at times, straightforward and, at times, an iterative exploration, and at its best through codesign.

Connection to te taiao, the natural world, is a central preoccupation: the recognition that our species is of nature but functioning so destructively. Sustainability is common sense but hard to do; expediency and profit have been given greater priority. LBC is thus compelling because it seeks to be regenerative but it requires a strong commitment to values. It is no coincidence that almost all LBC projects in Aotearoa are kaupapa Māori.

Architects are neophytes, looking for new challenges and invention. To do the larger work, we needed an office with great people and systems. The latter has largely been Ewan’s design project, as with his stewardship of our LBC projects. This development has been significant and led to his ongoing contributions around carbon and sustainability within the broader building industry and design community.

The practice has grown with broad foundations, allowing it to weather ups and downs. We work across many building types, reflecting our team in the office: spiritually focused projects (churches, retreat centres, monasteries); large commercial projects, led by practice principal Kevin Lux; early childhood through to tertiary education; sport buildings; and kaupapa Māori projects of many varieties. This variety and the ongoing relationships with clients support our practice over time, in turn, allowing us to serve their kaupapa.

Ewan Brown: Hugh and I came from different backgrounds and met just before we joined forces. Hugh grew up across the country; I lived in Palmerston North. Hugh went to Auckland architecture school; I went to the Wellington school. Hugh worked for a while as a builder and my father was one — I spent school holidays working on building sites. Hugh went almost immediately into private practice while I worked for a few practices here and in Glasgow, Scotland, and gained a variety of experiences and scales of work.

I came to the practice with extensive experience in large commercial projects, having worked for JASMaD, Craig Craig Moller (CCM), with residential and commercial work, including Rutherford House, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Education, the Chromie apartments and Wellington Airport redevelopment. The team environment for Wellington Airport was a life-changing experience and I was keen to create that type of team again. I had also been involved in social housing projects in Scotland from 1990 to 1993, and then came back to Wellington to work, like Hugh, at Structon before re-joining CCM.

Following a chance meeting in 2002 on the Wellington waterfront, we decided to join forces. Despite our different backgrounds, we found much in common, complemented each other’s skills and evolved as we worked together.

We both wanted to build a design-led practice from the ground up, not compete in the mainstream, focus on less work and do it well, run a project from beginning to end, develop really good documentation and run it well on site, work to budget and programme (critical, in our view, for clients), and gain work by creating fans from satisfied clients.

You never know which will be that special job that will open doors or become the beginning of a journey across your career together. We were committed to architecture deeply rooted in culture, community and environment, and that first special project was Mana Tamariki, a kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa in Palmerston North. I bid for it the day before Christmas break, 2003, on the new GETS (government electronic tender service) website, having started only with Hugh in March that year. Neither of us had worked on a te ao Māori project but some of our education projects and Hugh’s spiritually focused work resonated with them. We were given an interview and Hugh did a great sketch of a ‘nest of learning’ as a play structure for the kōhanga reo, which became part of the built project.

Mana Tamariki exemplifies our commitment to cultural expression in educational environments. The design reflects the principles of te ao Māori, creating a space where students can learn and grow in an environment that expresses their world view and fosters a sense of belonging.

This was a pivotal project for us, working with Bob Janhke as a te ao Māori consultant, learning about tapu and noa, and about expressing the kaupapa of a building. It was not a wharenui, nor iwi-based; it was a building for a small, passionate team dedicated to the restoration of te reo. We could say only “kia ora” or “tēnā koutou tamariki mā” when in the learning environments of te reo Māori. We listened, learned and enjoyed the narratives the building wanted and needed to tell. It began our journey to learning te reo Māori and the kaupapa behind projects and communities.

It also began our sustainability journey together over the next 21 years. Hugh was known for this but it was not strong in my commercial experience. I now realise there was a core memory from growing up on a farm and becoming aware at 10 years old that we were almost self-sufficient.

Following Mana Tamariki, we were invited to tender for Ngā Purapura, a health and well-being project for Te Wānanga o Raukawa. Several projects followed for the wānanga, including Whitireia (a temporary library), Te Ara a Tāwhaki (a new library, lecture theatre and student hub) and, most recently, Pā Reo campus. The last two of these projects are based on the LBC, today’s most advanced measure of regenerative sustainability in the built environment.

The ongoing relationship with the wānanga has been deeply rewarding and instructive, learning about community (whanaungatanga) and environment (kaitiakitanga). My journey has grown in understanding of kaupapa and manaakitanga, that all relationships in a project should be mana uplifting, and embrace kotahitanga, unity of purpose, and rangatiratanga, the qualities of leadership that all people at all levels can bring to the project.

These kaupapa have changed me and the way I work. These projects have allowed us to explore architecture as a vehicle for cultural expression and environmental stewardship.

Other LBC-inspired projects include our work for Ngāi Tūhoe in Te Urewera — Te Kura Whenua, a new Visitor Centre at Waikaremoana, and Te Kura Tangata, a new town hub for Ruatāhuna. The LBC pushed us to go beyond conventional sustainability measures, to achieve regenerative design that gives back more than it takes from the environment, while honouring Tūhoe’s connection to the land. 

Nearby, at the Tairāwhiti Gisborne regional airport, we worked closely with Rongowhakaata. In Taranaki, we designed Te Whare Hononga, an Anglican Church project seeking reconciliation with Ngāti te Whiti of Te Ātiawa.

Advocating for the environment has been with us to start with, not forcing it on clients but ensuring it is brought forward and championed. People asked how we made clients do these projects but it was never like that. Clients asked for some aspects of sustainability and we would push them a bit further. It would work sometimes. There was a time when it was a fringe area of work and not mainstream but, now, everything has changed in that space and one of my biggest joys is that it is now accepted almost as business as usual, and seen as something companies looking to the future do.

We both became Green Star trained before Green Star even came to New Zealand. I helped write the first sustainability guidelines for Victoria University. Our work with Ngāi Tūhoe introduced us to the LBC and then through the advocacy of Jerome Partington. LBC is the most onerous and aspirational sustainability system in the world, and it covers every conceivable aspect of construction.

Learning about carbon on Ngā Purapura marked a significant milestone in our sustainability journey. It was the first time we started looking at reducing embodied carbon in a project. We reduced steel content and increased timber because all we knew at this time was steel had a high carbon content and timber sequestered, or had a low-to-negative carbon content. With Gisborne Airport, we began counting carbon, using Branz’s LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) software – we saved 38.8 tonnes of carbon by replacing a couple of steel portals and all the roof steel purlins with timber. 

The built environment is responsible for around 40 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions — as architects, we have a responsibility to drive towards carbon neutrality by 2050. Living Buildings must meet seven key performance areas: water, energy, health, happiness, materials, equity and beauty. Rather than extracting from the environment or being neutral, Living Buildings are designed to return and regenerate resources actively, to enhance mauri ora, the vitality of the ecosystem and society within which it is sited.

LBC has taken us into all aspects of sustainability in construction. It is intense and it feels impossible until it’s done. After five projects — number four was Pā Reo and number five Ngā Mokopuna — we have almost completed two fully certified LBC projects. There are only 32 in the world.

A satisfying thread of our work has been evolving the office itself: a design project on its own. Over the course of 22 years, we have had 57 staff, with 15 currently. We’ve learned how to create a small, highperforming team where everyone in the team has a hand in drawing up a project and all are responsible in making sure it is as good as possible. The same happens on site and the goal is to meet the budget and the programme. It’s not always achieved but, generally, it has allowed us to leave a project with a happy client. This has enabled us to work on largescale projects, with the ASB Sports Centre (Ākau Tangi) being a very big first step in large commercial projects, which we have found enjoyable.

The team has also grown in diversity. LBC introduced us to the JUST programme in 2017. At this time, the Diversity Agenda formed and I was a founding signatory. We then became New Zealand’s first B Corp architects in 2022.

The Gold Medal award reflects the whole of our practice, as two architects working together over time, with a developing sense of purpose and contribution.

Tennent Brown has had a small, stable team for the past few years, “having fun and working hard”: Kevin Lux (principal), Maurice Pipson (senior associate), Brenda Solon (senior associate), Julie Cook (associate), Yiwen Seow (associate), Clayton Viljoen (associate), Chloe Coles (architect), Sam Gwynn (architect), Devo Staples (architect), Caitlyn Lee (graduate and LBC materials researcher), Steve Borgonje (senior technician), Chris Blanch (senior technician) and Sarah Dee (office manager, accounts).