Books, awards, websites, journals and anniversaries!
Meditations of a landscape architect
David Irwin’s boundary-spanning book is out in the wild. Photo: David St George
Whiringa-ā-nuku | October 20
AROUND THE MOTU
Our latest collation of stories-in-brief includes:
A successful round of launches for Meditations of a Landscape Architect
The 2026 edition of the Best Design Awards
Website recommendations
Landscape Review: Visual Representation and Simulation
One year ago this month: The Adaptation Futures conference
A successful first round of launches for Meditations of a Landscape Architect
Launch events for David Irwin’s book Meditations of a Landscape Architect have now been held at two Objectspace venues: First on 8 October at the Ockham Gallery in Ponsonby, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and then on 15 October at the Sir Miles Warren Gallery in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
David noted that the gallery setting in Auckland could not have been “more on point”, and on the night encouraged everyone present to indulge in a thorough viewing of the current exhibition In the image of a city curated by Kathy Waghorn and Kim Paton, adding that it talks to many aspects of Meditation 13 in his book on ‘Edges and things’.
Two book launches and counting: Tāmaki Makaurau at centre, flanked by images from Ōtautahi. Photography: David St George
Making and launching a book is a long way from growing up in Howick, building boats, bikes, trolleys and windsurfers in your father's garage.
People in the room for these book launches didn’t hear that story though, because has David stated Meditations of a Landscape Architect is not about him, or a history, or projects, or a manifesto. Instead his launch speech located the book’s equal parts of essay and photography within the context of his never-ending “personal practice as a professional designer”, running in parallel to but “separate to my professional studio design work”.
“(These are essays that) have sat and evolved on my desk for years. Close to hand, to mind and pen. They quietly fed studio conversations over the years and slowly crept into designs".
David spoke to the great difficulty for creatives of maintaining self-belief over an extended period. "Our game is a confidence game. For many of us, our confidence is tested over and over again. Having our values and principles clear, having explored them beforehand and knowing what these mean to our design work, helps us design with more consistent depth and meaning. This book is an example of this belief”.
"If you don’t think you can write or draw but need to, do so. People, the world wants to simplify, corral and box us all,” he said. “Don’t let it. My landscape architectural career has often explored, pushed and crossed boundaries. I have had to learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable, not because I needed to be there, but because I felt I needed to go there".
“People, more and more of our community should be publishing. Putting work out there, sharing ideas, directions and guidance. So it might inform the future, so others can learn and gain confidence. So wonder, wonder why not me?”
Not long after being welcomed to the world, Meditations of a Landscape Architect had climbed into the top 20 of the Independent Booksellers list and has been selling out at a number of bookstores listed on BookHub.
The 2026 edition of the Best Design Awards
The presentation of this year’s Best Design Awards run by the Designers Institute of New Zealand was held on Friday, 9 October, with an overall standout on the evening being Alt Group's work on the Nature-Ritual installation for client Fisher & Paykel at Milan Design Week.
Fifty awards were presented across the Spatial category as a whole, with LandLAB having an especially strong showing with Gold award wins for Te Whau Pathway and Te Rimutahi (x2). In addition LandLAB's collaboration with Graham Tipene on Waka Moana picked up a Gold in the Toitanga category. This and other public art wins were subsequently celebrated on Auckland Council's OurAuckland website.
Enoch Shi of Arcadia Landscape Architecture, won a Gold in the Best Design Awards' Student & Academic Spatial category for student work featured earlier this year on LAA. This work was also shortlisted in the 2026 Archisource Drawing of the Year competition, selected and exhibited from over 9,000 entries worldwide. (See LAA's story on the 2025 Archisource competition here).
Change-up for Ngā Aho and a new Government site dedicated to Planning reforms
A refresh for Ngā Aho
Ngā Aho, Aotearoa’s network of Māori and Indigenous design professionals, has given its website a major refresh.
Ngā Aho formalised as an entity in 2005/06, in response to the Urban Design Protocol released by the Ministry for the Environment, which failed to meaningfully engage with Māori aspirations and interests in the built environment. As a network of Māori design professionals, largely (but not exclusively) involved in the built and physical environment, Ngā Aho has continued to champion Māori design and Māori design practitioners as an advocate and connector. Ngā Aho has also sought to support and promote Pasifika and broader Indigenous practices and practitioners and in 2024 was presented with the prestigious RAIC International Prize by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
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planning.govt.nz
With new planning laws now in place the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions & Transport (MCERT) is publishing guidance, tools and updates at planning.govt.nz as the new planning system is introduced in stages. It appears to effectively replace Quality Planning, a website that existed to ‘promote good practice by sharing knowledge about all aspects of practice under the RMA’.
Research-informed articles on Visual Representation and Simulation
Volume 22, no. 2 of Lincoln University’s Landscape Review journal is now available to read, with a recently held Landscape and Visual Representation Symposium as its basis - as supported by Boffa Miskell’s Rhys Girvan and Corey Murray, who also contribute an article to this edition titled ‘Evolving tools, enduring principles: maintaining accuracy, transparency and trust in visual representation’.
The three other articles in this latest Landscape Review have been contributed by:
Jillian Walliss, Associate Professor from the School of Design, University of Melbourne, whose paper includes a drawing by Alison Page who will be in Ōtautahi Christchurch for the 2026 NZILA Firth Wānanga as its international keynote speaker on Thursday 5 November.
Hamish Clarke, a technical support representative at Trimble Inc. in Christchurch.
Lingwei (Kris) Tong is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) at the University of Canterbury.
You can download the entire journal as a single PDF document here.
The journal’s next call for papers has a fast-approaching submission deadline of 1 November for papers on ‘National Parks and Protected Landscapes: Perspectives, Practices, and Lessons for Landscape Management’.
One year ago this month: The Adaptation Futures conference
As a co-convenor, with Steven Ratuva, of last year’s historic hosting of the largest UN climate adaptation event held in Aotearoa New Zealand, fellow University of Canterbury Professor Bronwyn Hayward commented last week that hosting such a mammoth week-long gathering in Ōtautahi Christchurch “seemed impossible at first, and incredible now!”
To mark the anniversary of the Adaptation Futures Conference 2025 Bronwyn shared a highlights video produced by the Adaptation Fund.
The Christchurch Conversations run by Jessica Halliday and her team at the Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making had a heavy focus on climate change before and during the conference, culminating in a panel discussion on 15 October that included Isthmus principal Helen Kerr. You can view a video of the discussion by scrolling down on the Christchurch Conversations programme page and read a modified transcript of Helen Kerr’s input to the panel here.
Editor’s note: Bronwyn Hayward and Jessica Halliday are both contributing to the 2026 NZILA Firth Wānanga in Ōtautahi Christchurch on Friday 6 November in a session headed up as ‘Influence beyond the profession’.
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