Research and Design Team

I have been lucky to travel a lot as an adult and have spent time living in parts of Asia, in particular India and Tibet. Living outside my own cultural context for periods has shaped my understanding of the world and helped me to appreciate that there are many ways to understand, experience, and value different aspects of life. In my youth I was involved in native forest activism in Aotearoa. This ignited a passion for ecological justice. As I learnt more about the relationship between colonisation and ecology I came to understand that ecological justice cannot be separated from social justice, at least in the part of the world I live in. In my early twenties I began the lifelong journey of learning about and attempting to practice decolonisation in Aotearoa and am grateful to mentors, teachers, and friends for setting me on this pathway of learning.

I am motivated by wanting to make our cities healthier and more just for people as well as the living ecologies we are a part of. My goal is to make sure that climate change adaptation (in the realm of the built environment) is approached not just through a technical lens, but also through a socio-cultural-ecological point of view, and that climate change adaptation does not perpetuate or become a new form of colonisation.

My research seeks to redefine sustainable architecture and urban design through emulating how ecosystems work, changing the goals from sustainable to regenerative development, and integrating complex social factors into living architectural and urban design. My current research explores how nature based solutions can be used to define ecological design in the urban built environment with particular regard to how climate change and continued loss of global biodiversity affects architecture and communities. My expertise include: design for urban biodiversity, urban ecosystem services, biophilic design, and biomimicry. My research team and I have recently been awarded a Marsden grant for the research project ‘NUWAO – Nature-based Urban design for Wellbeing and Adaptation in Oceania’. This builds upon previous work for SPREP in Vanuatu, and ‘Ocean Cities’ work for UNESCAP. I am author or co-author/editor of several books including Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry (2018), and Ecologies Design: Transforming Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (2020). More about my publications (and free access) can be found here: www.mpedersenzari.webs.com.

I have been working in the design industry for 10+ years, firstly as a senior design tutor at Massey University, Toi whakaari and most recently as a teaching fellow at Victoria University. I have also worked in a professional capacity as an exhibition designer for Gibson Group, kitchen designer for Kitchen Studio and as an Interior Designer for my own practice M Darling Design. Recently I have gone back to complete my Masters which looks at weaving climate change science, ecologies and Mātauranga Māori through spatial constructs. This has been embedded into a project with the Deep South National Science Challenge to improve the resilience of the coastal environment of the Ōhau – Kuku – Waikawa coastline in Horowhenua, to the impacts of climate change, and to assist Māori in adapting to the rising seas, increased flooding and salinification. Investigating action orientated climate change transitions to water based land uses that enhance taonga species, namely tuna and inanga. Being involved in this mahi in all its forms continues my passion for working with people for people.

I’ve always been drawn to the natural world.  This led me from school to study botany, ecology and one of NZ’s first environmental studies papers at Auckland University, and later in landscape ecology and earth sciences for my PhD at Victoria University of Wellington.  Before my postgraduate studies, my first job was in land resource assessment for the former Water and Soil Conservation Organisation, which gave me a formative appreciation of catchments and working landscapes, as well as environmental protection needs. Later work brought knowledge in urban ecology, biodiversity conservation, sustainability and development issues.

I like taking the big picture view. Submissions on the development of the “old” Resource Management Act for the NZ Ecological Society, several years at the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and then contracting to the Department of Conservation on biodiversity and conservation policy, all developed my big picture, environmental systems view.  I have tried to bring this view to my private consulting work as well as to contract university teaching. Over the last 20 years I have worked as a wide-ranging independent environmental consultant and lectured in Environmental Studies and Environmental Health at VUW and Otago University, Wellington. I am now an Honorary Research Fellow at both universities. I regard myself as a “specialist generalist”, something akin to being an environmental General Practitioner.

Beginning with a formative year as a very young Volunteer Service Abroad teacher in Tonga, I’ve had the occasional opportunity to work and travel around Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the great Pacific Ocean. I’ve consulted on flood and landslide assessment in the Solomon Islands, advised on erosion and land management in Fiji and Solomon Islands, documented Pacific Island deforestation, and published an international review of mass movement impacts on land productivity. Since 2017 I’ve been involved with teams working on nature-based adaptation projects specifically in Vanuatu and more generally around Oceania, leading to current work on the NUWAO (Nature-based Urban design for Wellbeing and Adaptation in Oceania) project. I’ve been a Board member and Trustee of several NZ-based Pacific development organisations.

Now, nearing the end of my professional career, I still appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the urgent responses to our current climate crisis, with a view to the need for sustainable and equitable resource use and a Just Transition. I’ve seen the pitfalls of many expert-led projects and I’m now much more interested in co-design approaches.  I recognise the enormous reservoir of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Mātauranga Māori in our region, and the power of bringing together this traditional knowledge with western-grounded “scientific method” knowledge: my personal belief is that they complement and enhance each other.  As well as my work in NUWAO, I am a member of Mauri Tūhono, a group working to develop a new decolonised partnership between the people and the natural environment in the Wellington region.  Through my Progressive Jewish beliefs, I also have a strong involvement in bringing faith-based values into responses to current environmental crises.

Tēna koutou katoa. He uri tenei nō Ngati Pakehā, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto, me Ngai Te Rangi hoki. I tipu ake au I raro I te maru o Rangitoto. No Tāmaki ahau. Kei Kaipātiki ahau e noho ana i tēnei wa. Ko Sibyl Bloomfield tōku ingoa. He Kaihoahoa me Kaiako whenua au.

I grew up under the shelter and protection of Rangitoto in Te Hau Kapua/Devonport, Tāmaki Mākaurau/Auckland, and spent much of my childhood exploring the coastal neighbourhoods beaches, islands, volcanoes, waterways and bays of Tīkapa Moana o Hauraki/Hauraki Gulf and Waitemata Harbour, and the beaches, dunes, coastal wetlands and hills of the Kapiti coast in Wellington. After moving to Wellington to study Interior Architecture and then Landscape Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington, I worked in research and administrative support roles and taught in the Architecture and Landscape Architecture programmes. After completing my masters I returned to Auckland where I live and work, with my husband and 2 children. After some time in practice in Auckland I have been in academia both at Unitec in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture programme, and now at AUT in Huri Te Ao (The School of Future Environments) in the Architecture and Future Environments programme as a Senior Lecturer.

I hold a Masters in Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Design from Victoria University of Wellington and have been teaching in Architecture and Landscape Architecture programmes for over 10 years. My teaching and research practice is grounded in a commitment to shaping our place in the world by engaging in Te Ao Māori, Te Moana nui a Kiwa identity and diversity and actively responding to the ecological, socio-cultural and climate crises of the Anthropocene. My research works to develop a deeper understanding of complex adaptive social-ecological systems, from individual community members to society, and the complex interlinking ecological systems, positions landscape architecture to lead the investigation into increasing the adaptive capacity of our cities and communities. With a particular interest in the significant role the coast plays in our Pacific cultures and identities and the impact of the over-development of these fragile transitional zones in our urban centres in our changing climate reality. Weaving western and Indigenous knowledge and using theories and principles from resilience thinking and Te Āo Māori as lenses of inquiry, and guidelines for redefining vulnerable coastal land, urban design and landscape architecture have the potential to facilitate and encourage positive interaction at the interface of the social and ecological systems within (vulnerable) coastal communities.

Growing up in a bicultural family in a city with a lot of immigrant communities, I have been drawn to with different cultural communities and cultural contexts in planning and design. Growing up in a city, I was constantly on the lookout for finding natural spaces, urban nature and art. These interests led to pursuing work in sustainability and later degrees in ecology, environmental planning and landscape architecture. 

Earlier in my career, I began working with communities and other stakeholders to apply sustainability principles within planning and landscape architectural practice. My work as a community designer and planner is motivated by applying an evidence-based approach that draws from other disciplines such as restoration ecology, hydrology, public health, sociology and architecture. In the states, I developed long-term university-community partnerships as part of studio practice with students.

I have focused my research, teaching, and practice on solving problems associated with sea level rise, flooding, and stormwater. My motivations have been to work collaboratively across disciplines and with communities to develop local responsive designs that consider community needs and landscape changes under different scenarios of sea level rise and stormwater management. Past and current projects have faced critical environmental concerns: design and planning adaptations to sea level change, the use of green infrastructure in addressing stormwater issues, and engaging communities in addressing both equity and environmental problems.

I have received grant funding and published works on community-based approaches to stormwater management and community engagement around climate change. For more about my research and teaching, please refer to https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/victoria.chanse and to https://www.vchanse.com.

Through my work in international development I’ve been lucky enough to spend considerable time living in, and learning from, Pacific island countries. I spent three years working for the New Zealand Aid Programme in Solomon Islands, where all three of my kids started school. I’ve also spent long periods in Fiji for research, including when the kids were very young. Solomon Islands and Fiji particularly are close to me, part of me and my family. It’s front and centre for me that Aotearoa and Pacific island nations are close, sharing historic and contemporary people-to-people links and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean. This influences how I see our region; I see myself and my family as of the Pacific. 

My university teaching and research work has focused on urban issues (particularly informal settlements) in small islands, and resilience as urbanisation interfaces with climate change. I’m also interested in interpretations and models of wellbeing, however they are appropriate locally, as we all work together to make Aotearoa, Oceania, and our planet a better place for all. 

I am a fifth-year student at Victoria University, studying towards a Master of Architecture. My passion lies within sustainability and the communities that occupy these spaces. My studies in 2022 will explore how indigenous knowledge can enable socially and ecologically resilient architecture in the Cook Islands. I am excited to learn more about our cultural heritage throughout the process and work alongside NUWAO on this journey. 

Kia ora, He uri ahau nō Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, me Rongomaiwahine. Ko Maija Stephens ahau. I grew up in Te Kuiti, my whānau are from Heretaunga and I am now based in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara. I am entering my fourth year of study at Massey University’s Toi Rauwhārangi, College of Creative Arts. 

I am an emerging artist/photographer and my practice surrounds issues concerning Te Taiao (the environment), whakapapa, and my experience as a wahine Māori. I aim to decolonise the medium of photography itself through the way I wield the camera and by bringing visual precedence to complex concepts informed by mātauranga māori. This takes form in both conceptual, studio as well as documentary photography. More recently I have started getting into video and audio work and I have been the documentary photographer/videographer of a few indigenous-led research projects such as Te Waituhi ā Nuku: Drawing Ecologies, the Ātea Project and now, NUWAO. 

I was fortunate to get a New Zealand Manaaki scholarship in 2018, where I pursued my undergraduate study for four years at Auckland university in Auckland, New Zealand – pioneering this in my family. My greater passion and interest in how climate change affects the pacific people allowed me to choose environmental science and human and physical geography as my majors during my university study. I completed my study and attained a bachelor’s degree at the end of 2022. Momentarily, I am assisting the National Climate Change Officer at the Office of the President in my home country Kiribati.

I am a friendly and sociable person who enjoys reading, meditation, watching movies and, spending time with my family and close friends in my free time.

I am influenced by my Samoan and New Zealand roots, which epitomise my trademark aesthetic of clean, sophisticated pieces with vibrant, graphic, and playful touches that reflect both my cultural heritage and warm, energetic personality.

​In addition, I produce a significant number of bespoke pieces for clients with varying budgets. On every project, I am a design partner first and foremost – drawing on a rich, creative background spanning over two decades. Partnering closely with the client at every phase of the process, I leverage a diverse set of materials and fabrication techniques to realise their unique vision.

Meaning of the NUWAO logo: Each of the components of the logo signify a different aspect of the NUWAO project. I wanted to utlise flora (kowhai leaves and hibiscus) in this logo in a way that symbolises nature and the unification of Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands. Water was a crucial component because it symbolises the ocean and how it connects Oceania. The ocean is important to NUWAO because of climate change adaptation. Lastly, the hands symbolise the centering of human wellbeing and cultural knowledge in relation to climate change adaptation work.