Architecture is about connection — people to place, people to buildings, buildings to place. Everything we do should come back to how it affects people and how architecture can improve their experience of being in a space. At Wingates we are passionate about this.

Indeed our purpose is “Creating Places that truly matter”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about our place — Aotearoa New Zealand — and how our unique experiences shape our understanding of people and place. Not just our lived experiences, but also the history and whakapapa that came before us.

I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin, and I’ve inherited a rich heritage from both sides of my family. My father has generational roots in England’s Midlands— I’m fairly certain there’s a bit of Viking or Saxon blood in there too, judging by the inherited love of a drink or two.

My mother's whakapapa connects back to Ngāpuhi. While I’m proud of my Māori heritage — even if it’s not physically obvious — I’ve often felt like a bit of a fraud. I can recite my pepeha, but a recent trip to the Far North made me realise that’s exactly what I’d been doing — reciting, without fully understanding what it meant.

The Māori connection comes through my grandfather. My mum, who’s one of 11 siblings, didn’t even realise she was Māori until her teens. To her, she just had a brown dad. After receiving a European education at St Stephens in South Auckland, my grandfather made the conscious decision to raise his family as Pākehā, effectively severing the connection to his culture. And so, our link to our roots in Northland was lost.

It’s taken two generations to begin healing that rift — sparked by a few of my cousins, and now proudly carried forward by the next generation, including my own children.

The first real bridge back was through education. Three cousins — all academics in related fields — discovered they were related and realised they shared a similar story: feeling somewhat Māori but disconnected from the lived experience. Being academics, they wanted to explore what cultural separation across two generations does to someone’s sense of place and identity.

That thinking really resonated with me. They proposed a wānanga at our whānau marae near Ōhaeawai in Northland, with the goal of normalising marae visits and reconnecting scattered branches of the family. I travelled up with my 23-year-old son, my sister, her daughter, and a few close cousins.

Marae in rural Aotearoa aren’t always the ornately carved and carefully maintained buildings you see in places like Waitangi or Rotorua. Many are simple, functional spaces, infused with the wairua of generations. There were powerful and emotional kōrero about identity, whakapapa, and reconnection. But the most profound connection I made was to the land and place itself:

• Ko Te Ahuahu te Maunga

  – I got to walk on our mountain.

• Ko Ōmāpere te Roto

  – I stood close to our lake (though we couldn’t access it directly — it’s on private land now, which is another story).

• Ko Parawhenua te Marae

  – I slept in our wharenui, ate in our wharekai, ( and washed a lot of dishes!)

We learnt the history of our marae and a neighbouring one. We learnt about the realities of running a functioning marae, and about some of our tupuna (ancestors). We heard how Ngāpuhi taught themselves trench warfare to defeat the British in the next valley — and how, 50 years later, the Māori Battalion trained there, soaking in the wairua of their ancestors before heading off to fight a war for a king they didn’t know.

What I’m most proud of from that weekend is my son’s response. It was his first visit to his marae, and he jumped in wholeheartedly — connecting, listening, and contributing. Since then, he’s enrolled in a Te Reo course and has become a research assistant to my brainy cousins, helping them write a paper on the effects of cultural disconnection. It fills me with hope that his generation is deeply invested in connection — to whenua and whānau.

For me, my journey of reconnection has deepened my pride in my Māori heritage. Now, when I speak my pepeha, I don’t just recite it — I speak it with the understanding that comes from standing on Te Ahuahu, overlooking Ōmāpere, and knowing a part of me will always belong there.

Ultimately, I guess it’s all about people - He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata" — about place, identity, and connection. Bringing it back to Wingates for a moment, we believe in the power of community and the importance of designing spaces that reflect who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. “Creating Places that truly matter”

Our aspiration remains as ever to partner with like-minded clients, whānau, and organisations to shape Aotearoa New Zealand’s next chapter — one that honours the past, connects us in the present, and creates a better future for all.