Local Legends: Castlecliff Coast Care
Local Legends is a new series shining a spotlight on good people doing good things in our community. To kick things off we caught up with Graham and Lyn Pearson (pictured above), the beating hearts …
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Tī Kōuka House: Wild Lawn Project
The Black Pine team spends a lot of time thinking about and designing buildings, but architecture doesn’t stop at the walls. It spills out into the landscape, shaping how we live, breathe, and connect with …
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Architecture Q&A: 2025 Māori Ward Candidates
Ahead of 2025 local elections we invited all Māori Ward candidates for Whanganui District and Horizons Regional Councils (Raki Māori, Tonga Māori) to share their perspectives on architecture, community, the environment and more.
Responses were received …
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Architecture Q&A: 2025 Whanganui Mayoral Candidates
Ahead of the 2025 local elections, Black Pine invited the four mayoral candidates in our home city of Whanganui to answer three quick questions on urban design and architectural legacy. Responses were received from sitting councilors …
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FAQs: Passivhaus
At Back Pine HQ we talk about Passivhaus every day, but we appreciate not everyone understands what it actually is or why you’d choose to design that way.
What materials can you use? Is it more …
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NZIA Awards 2025
The Black Pine team was very humbled to take to the stage at the recent 2025 Western Architecture Awards in recognition of our part in an award-winning project.
The competition, organised by Te Kāhui Whaihanga New …
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Shaped By The Sea
Whangamata Surf Lifesaving Club, September 1972 / 📸 Digital NZ
For generations, New Zealand’s surf lifesaving clubs have stood as rugged outposts against our beautiful – but …
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Website Carbon Calculator
We’ve recently started thinking about refreshing our website, with all the usual dilemmas of trying to figure out if it does a good job telling people what Black Pine is about, and how we might …
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Growing Our Skills
While many architectural principles have stayed the same for centuries, our industry changes fast. Surprising new technologies, clever materials, and better standards are being developed all the time.
To be better designers, it’s essential that we’re …
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Tī Kōuka House
In late 2024, Black Pine took a significant step in what we hope will be a hundred year (and more) journey for our company: we moved into a new home.
We’ve called it ‘Tī Kōuka House’ …
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Traditional Barn Inspires New Library
Winthrop is a small historic farming town in Washington State. When the community raised money to build a new library, more than a quarter of the town’s population of four hundred contributed ideas …
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Biophilia
We share a deep, innate connection with nature, developed over millions of years of evolution that has attuned us to the natural world. For many, this bond is most vividly expressed in the simple beauty …
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Design a Home for Life
Conventional family homes are changing to accommodate shifting lifestyle needs.
Families want eco-friendly, affordable, warm, dry, homes.
Flexibility is also important for working from home and providing spaces for additional family members.
Town houses are one option. Central …
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Light
Vision is one of our key senses and is enhanced by light from direct, reflected and artificial sources. Light allows us to notice our environment and can enhance architecture.
Natural and artificial light illuminate colours and …
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Tadelakt Plaster
Tadelakt:
Tadelakt is a type of natural, lime-based plaster originating in the Marrakech region of Morocco.
It provides a solution for finishing that is kind to the environment and to our health, while providing a beautiful and …
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Being a Good Ancestor
Being a good ancestor
The yearning for constant improvement raises the thought… what does it take to be a good ancestor? Helping your neighbour, drinking your coffee without a lid, growing your own parsnips… Every bit we can to improve the lives …
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Wool Insulation
Something that Aotearoa has an endless supply of is sheep. That is why this insulation material – essentially a by-product of one of our biggest exports – is not only a sustainable material option, but …
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Cross Laminated Timber (CLT)
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is one of the most significant types of engineered wood product recently developed for structural applications. [1]Constructed from layers of timber glued together in opposing directions, it can also be …
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Clay Plaster
Continuing the conversation on natural building materials, is an overview of clay plaster. Clay could be considered a vernacular New Zealand building material, given our land’s richness of the substance. It can sometimes be used …
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Sustainable Forestry
Trees play a large role in New Zealand’s vernacular architecture. It is hard to beat locally grown and harvested native, naturally durable timber to facilitate our demand for sustainable construction.The awareness and demand for naturally …
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Timber Aging Gracefully
Longevity of a building is rooted in its materiality. We want our buildings to stand the test of time, and we often go the extra mile to separate our buildings from the elements. What would …
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Ishibatate: Traditional Japanese Construction
What is Ishibatate?Traditional Japanese timber frame construction set the standard for what holistic architecture could be. All materials are natural, sustainably sourced, and replenished after harvest. They are handled sustainably during all the stages of …
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Universal Floor Design
What is Universal Design?‘Universal Design’ is a term coined by architect Ronald L. Mace. A wheelchair user from a young age due to Polio, he was acutely aware of the accessibility challenges posed by most …
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