We craft fireside chairs, whole city districts and the places, buildings, homes, objects and experiences in between. Our work is to reveal the extraordinary. We pursue this in hotel towers and remote cabins, at all scales, budgets and typologies. From Aotearoa New Zealand we do this over six continents.

For two decades we have shaped every aspect of the environments we work with, pursuing places and experiences of cohesive and concentrated beauty. To do so, the studio has built a fluid and unified process from otherwise fragmented disciplines: masterplan and development strategy, urban design, architecture, heritage and conservation architecture, creative direction, and interior, hospitality, retail, furniture, industrial, brand, fabric and fragrance design. Our intergenerational projects, like the nine city blocks of downtown Auckland’s Britomart district, weave all of these together into a single immersive work.

Ours studio was formed within the legacy of Āpihai Te Kawau’s tuku whenua on behalf of Ngāti Whātua. It is grounded in ethics and driven by curiosity. With our clients we are humble and voracious collaborators. Everything we do is elevated by the rituals, challenges and opportunities of those with and for whom we build.

Planetary constraints drive much of our search for new forms of beauty. Biosphere scientists are integrated into our practice. We undertake research, publish open-source carbon tools, run carbon positive studios, and have delivered the nation’s first five-star Greenstar hotel and six-star Greenstar heritage office buildings. We made our first carbon positive house — the nation’s Home of the Year — a decade ago.

Founded by Pip and Nat Cheshire in 2004, the studio has refused rapid growth to hone a culture dense with ability, long-term collaboration, high energy and deep care. The consequence is a firm of nine nationalities and a long-term equal gender balance at both studio and principal level.

Principals and their associates shape teams and guide projects by concentrating the strengths of exceptional architects, designers, graduates, makers, researchers and collaborators. This lets directors work within every project, from strategic intent to the fingertip-texture of nail heads. In this way the ideas and ambitions of our projects are strengthened by every step of their making. Those projects are published, awarded and celebrated globally.

Together with our clients and collaborators we craft cities down to their flowers and homes down to their scents. We work in pursuit of wonder, and choose the extraordinary over the perfect. We are trying, with every detail, to expand what is imagined possible.