Architect Rich Naish on the warning delivered by Cyclone Gabrielle

RTA Studio's Rich Naish describes architects as the doctors of the built world. Photo / Michael Craig

The View from My Window: It’s time to throw out the rule book, says Auckland architect Rich Naish

If we were doctors and learned a pioneering new way of dealing with heart transplants, we’d be adopting it tomorrow because it’s a life-and-death situation. As architects, we’re the doctors of the built world and it’s our responsibility to drive that same sort of life-saving, low-carbon approach.

A hundred years ago, we didn’t know what we know now and it probably seemed reasonably logical to build a levy for a river that floods once in 100 years. But when it starts flooding once every five years, you’ve got to completely throw out your rule book and start again. I just can’t stress enough how urgent it is and how everybody — on the client side and the architect side — needs to wake up and get going. We’re living in a climate emergency and we’ve got no time to waste.

Prior to this crisis, the most an architect could be expected to do was create a building that nurtured its inhabitants and made their lives better. But if we can do that and also nurture the planet and ensure its survival, then that becomes part of our responsibility as well. Cyclone Gabrielle has lifted all those issues to the surface.

When it comes to safely building or rebuilding, there are three categories: well above sea level and well out of flood plains and river valleys; that’s a no-brainer. At the other end, there’s managed retreat, where you just shouldn’t build or rebuild in those particular places. And there’s a category in the middle where you can adaptively build to be resilient, which is what our beach house [on the Tāwharanui Peninsula] represents.

It’s the fourth house I’ve designed for the family. Every one of them has been some sort of experiment that pushes the boundaries and this particular site appealed to me. No one wanted to buy it, because it was just 4-5m above the high-tide mark and also in the path of an overland flow that regularly flooded it.

Naish at his beach house on the Tāwharanui Peninsula, designed for long-term resilience against the impact of climate change. Photo / Patrick Reynolds

At one level, it could be considered human arrogance to build a house so close to the beach. The challenge was taking the long view over the next 100 years to design something not only resilient to sea-level rise but also the cycle of overland flow events caused by heavy rain from downpours and cyclones. It’s up on stilts and we’ve recontoured the land to provide a graded flow so that the water finds its way to a culvert that takes it to the beach and through a stream to the sea.

That’s working brilliantly and it stood up to Cyclone Gabrielle really well, but it’s scary to see it’s happening so fast. I thought I was building resilience for the next generation, but it’s clearly going to be part of my lifetime as well.

I’ve always been aware of the impact of climate change, from the early environmental concerns that were going on in the 80s and 90s when I was at school and then university. I’d have to credit some of that to the knowledge I constantly received from my brother [Tim Naish], who’s a Professor of Earth Sciences at Victoria University. So I guess I’ve had the luxury of being well-informed.

Some clients are attracted to us because they know we’re pioneers or first adopters in this area, others come with an open mind. I’m not trying to tell everybody they have to be carbon zero, because that’s just such a challenge people give up, but be “carbon better”. Any reduction is a good start. And when you can make a sexy-looking building that mitigates all of the effects of carbon production, in construction and operation, that’s got to be the Holy Grail.

We’re right in the grunty stages of design for Fisher & Paykel [the company’s new headquarters is being developed on a 22,000sq m industrial site that will be regenerated with pre-European era native plants]. Their starting point was a sustainable building that also looks after their people in a post-pandemic environment.

At the other end of the scale, we’re running a project to build an affordable single-unit house, at a targeted cost of $250,000 — way cheaper than the current KiwiBuild price. We’re doing all the testing at the moment, looking at an engineered timber version with no stub and stick framing that’s like a flat-pack piece of furniture. In terms of managed retreat after Cyclone Gabrielle, suddenly there’s a need to bang out a few hundred of them to put in the right place.

— As told to Joanna Wane

• Auckland architect Rich Naish is the founder of RTA Studio, which has committed to reducing the carbon footprint of its projects by roughly a third over each of the next three decades, to become carbon-zero by 2050. According to the NZ Green Building Council, New Zealand’s built environment is responsible for 20 per cent of the country’s carbon footprint — based on the production of building materials, such as steel or glass, and the carbon associated with operating a building, including electricity. The Drawing Board, a new series on Māori architecture, is screening on Whakaata Māori on Monday nights and available on demand at Maori+.