Around the motu

Bruno Marques’ impressive four-year tour of duty as the President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects is drawing to a close. Read about this and newsbriefs on the NZILA Firth Wānanga, Aotearoa Festival of Architecture and more in our latest ‘Around the motu’ newswire.

Taking a stand on the need for thoughtful law-making: Do the effects of development stop at the title boundary? Are our lives confined to parcels of real estate? Aren’t new laws that separate ‘growth’ from ‘environment’ more likely to harm than help our economy? 

Landscape architects, urban designers, academics, and students gathered on 23 September for The Future (and Morbid Symptoms), an evening seminar, hosted by the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects Tuia Pito Ora (NZILA) Auckland Branch in partnership with Isthmus.

LAA contributor Garth Falconer puts his pen to work on the sad story of a forgotten landmark, renewing an argument that “with imagination and some determination, Shoal Bay could become one of Auckland’s great waterfront landscapes”.

In bringing the thinking behind four decades of design practice into view, David Irwin’s Meditations of a Landscape Architect is an invocation of many fundamentals for the profession: Let the land breathe; Hold your pen lightly; and What is what (to name a few).

For Natasha Iyer “every garden is a relationship”. No stranger to taking big decisions and stepping on to less trodden paths, Natasha’s career in landscape design, landscape architecture and garden design continues to flower.

Sam Bourne reflects on the road trip he took, in his overseeing role of head judge for the 2026 Resene NZILA Awards, with the four Design stream judges: Andrew Norris (lead), Kirstie Thorpe, Hugh Smith and guest judge Whare Timu, co-chair of Ngā Aho.

The opening date of 3 November for INTERWOVEN - the 2026 Lincoln University Landscape Architecture graduating MLA and BLA (Hons) exhibition - is fast approaching. Learn more about members of this year’s cohort who are currently finalising their Major Design projects.

The LAA newswire delivers some news ‘clips’ from RNZ, and stories of interest to dedicated followers of landscape architecture sourced from around the world. While we develop this content stream further, we’d welcome feedback to laaotearoa@nzila.co.nz

This latest newswire digest ranges across biodiversity, a project milestone, an events watch notice, a landscape studio update and shout-outs to interesting endeavours being undertaken by Christchurch City Council and the Paererewā charitable trust.

Motivated by the sentiment that “it feels like we are at a critical juncture as we look to streamline the planning system”, Karl Check of Boffa Miskell shares his thoughts on the place of trees in our urban environments as critical infrastructure.

The local government sector in Aotearoa New Zealand is currently the focus of a major shake-up. In an ideal world wouldn’t it be better for redrawn administrative boundaries to match catchments rather than cut through them? And wouldn’t this reflect more meaningful connections to landscape?

Sitting days at Parliament are fast evaporating. Even so the pace before this year’s Election campaigning accelerates has reached a fever pitch, now jammed together with a consultation on testing the approach to National Policy Direction” to replace the RMA.

There’s seldom a lack of speaker events around the motu to keep track of - all providing valuable insights and perspectives on topics as varied as Visual Representation, what it takes to come out on top in Competitions and the pressing need to talk about Urban Heat.

Atelier South is an intensive international Summer School hosted by the School of Architecture at Otago Polytechnic that explores how design education can respond to urgent environmental and social challenges.

James Paxton of Reset shares insightful thoughts about Te Tauoma - a brownfield regeneration project that may not have seen the light of day, but that sheds light on “what can happen when landscape architecture leads the shaping of cities from the very beginning”.

Drawing on the Mangawhai Hills project, Reset co-director James Paxton sets out a belief that “when ecology, landform, water, movement and public life become the starting point, development produces communities that are healthier, more resilient and more memorable”.

This week’s news monitoring scan has brief items about: Te Pūmanawa o Onehunga; a call to take part in People’s Choice voting for IFLA’s Global Landscape Architecture (GLA) awards; a special recognition of Ines Stäger for her service to Forest & Bird; and the sad news of the death of Hastings District Council chief executive To’osavili Nigel Bickle.

The shortlist for the 2026 Resene NZILA Awards is out! The 15 categories and 51 contenders amply show that the positive impacts made by all landscape architecture professionals extend across an extraordinary breadth of locations and clients. When you look, landscape architecture is everywhere.

Is the distinctive contribution that landscape architects make something larger than legislation? In this thinkpiece, Shannon Bray, positions the profession’s long-term relevance on its ability to bring differing perspectives together and to explain why landscape matters in the first place.