In 2025 Sarah Allan, Head of Architecture within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in the UK visited Aotearoa ~ New Zealand. A former member of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), Allan is well experienced in advocating for good built environment design through central and local government.
During her visit the Architectural Centre took the opportunity to host a round table discussion: “If a government architect is the solution, what is our problem?”
The round table was led by presentations by four speakers: Sarah Allan (UK), Olivia Hyde (NSW, Aus), Jake Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Arawa, Te Whakatōhea ~ Auckland) and Stuart Niven (Wellington).
Recordings and transcripts of the presentations can be found here.
The subsequent discussion was recorded and notes from this are compiled here. From these notes a number of aims for the role/office and actions on how to ‘get there’ emerged.
AIMS:
- provide regional or local expertise to fill gaps knowledge.
- standardise design review processes
- champion good architecture and nurture discussion about design values
- run idea generation competitions to give clarity to problematic kinds of procurement (eg. complex public projects)
- oversee and/or provide different types of training, internships, and apprenticeships to give consistency across industry.
- provide support in instances where ‘government is the client’ – a role that facilitates and enables, rather than procures.
- promote ‘design’ as the solution to confluent or complex (contradictory) spatial problems eg. sustainability, flood mitigation, population demographics (aging) etc.
- support decisions on how (why & where) land can be assembled strategically for development (broad view urban development planning)
- inform building and planning codes
- undertake research developing unique knowledge resources relative to tikanga, climate/geology, building materials and historical industry strengths/weaknesses.
- be able to draw other specialists into ‘design conversations’ eg. economists (ref. precedent economist, Mariana Mazzucato https://marianamazzucato.com/)
ACTIONS:
- map out and define those functions that work best within Government, Regional/Local Government, or outside of government;
- establish the scope the potential service – not an individual or even an individual disciplinary skill set – but a team to provide a diversity of advice from a diversity of experience – people trained in design in the many areas and able to network across specialist areas and the community.
- be able to demonstrate how such an office/role would help achieve local and central governance goals – economically and socially – by presenting models of successful projects from elsewhere.
- elaborate, in particular, on examples that demonstrate how ‘design’ was the solution to confluent or complex (contradictory) spatial problems.
