Wellington School of Architecture Te Kura Waihanga

Research

The Wellington School of Architecture is involved in local and international cutting-edge design and research.

Academic staff and postgraduate students in the school engage in individual and group research projects that cover a wide range of topics in Architecture, Building Science, Interior Architecture, and Landscape Architecture.

Key research areas:

  • architectural and urban design processes
  • building economics, management and regulation
  • building performance and evaluation
  • drawing and modelling for design
  • energy and environmental building design
  • sustainable architecture
  • urban landscapes
  • virtual design visualisation.

Recent research has focused on:

  • building control reform
  • building performance, construction and project management
  • New Zealand architecture and design history
  • the development of participatory processes in architectural practice
  • the efficient use of energy in architecture
  • the evaluation of buildings in use.
Plant filled atrium at Te Aro campus

View our public lectures

The Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation regularly hosts public lectures on a variety of topics within architecture, design, and the built environment. Check them out on our YouTube playlist.

View our lectures

Research news

Catch up with some of the groundbreaking work being done by researchers in the School of Architecture.

Segment of Bliss Graetz's summer gold award-winning poster about the impact of community gardens.

Award-winning research on the impact of community gardens

Bliss Graetz, a 4th year Master of Landscape Architecture student, used her Summer Research scholarship to research the impacts of community gardens.
Ged Finch's xframe prototype being constructed. Two wooden panels of x shaped wood constructed in field

Boost for waste-free building solution

Architecture PhD candidate Ged Finch’s ‘X-Frame’ structural solution for creating waste-free buildings is one step closer to becoming a commercial reality.
Close up of Timothy Donaldson's Summer Gold Award-winning poster about architectural design for mental health wards.

Designing mental health wards

Tim Donaldson, a 5th year Master of Architecture student, won a Summer Gold Award for his project studying acute mental health ward design in New Zealand.

Staff and students

Postgraduate students in the Wellington School of Architecture play a vital role in developing high quality research outputs. Our staff supervise students across a wide variety of thesis topics. In many cases research findings are presented at national and international conferences. Many postgraduates have become industry leaders in their chosen field.

Our staff publish a wide variety of scholarly articles, books, case studies, chapters, edited collections, monographs, reports, and conference papers.

Further information on staff research interests and publications can be found on our staff profiles.

Research centres

Our research centres are well established in the School and act as a vehicle for collaborative research and as a resource to our postgraduate students and staff.