What can we do for you and who are we?
What can we help to create for you?
We are an award winning architecture and interior design studio who want to help you on your journey to create beautiful, sustainable spaces that can inspire you and improve your wellbeing. We aim to create high quality, functional designs that are modern and yet timeless. This project may be a new build project, such as a new home, or a renovation of an existing building or space.
We work on projects both small and large. We enjoy the personalisation, collaboration and craftsmanship that comes with smaller projects, while larger projects often offer more opportunities for innovation and strategic thinking. We see architecture and design as a tool that can both enhance your brand while offering entrepreneurial opportunities for your project.
We offer architectural design services for residential, commercial and public projects. We also offer interior design services for your project where we can create designs for both hard fitout (kitchens, bathrooms, cabinetry and finishes) and soft fitout (furniture and furnishings.) Refer to ‘Services’ or ‘Nest’ to find out more about our range of services.
While our main places of design have been in Australasia, Europe, UK & USA, we are open and interested in designing projects all around the world. We provide remote consultancy services to achieve this.
What is our process?
For most projects, we start off with creating a conceptual design for you, based on your project brief. We then work with you to develop the design further so that it is more of a concrete idea with spaces and sizes articulated. This ‘developed design’ can then be taken and worked through on a technical level with local architects or draughtsmen. In some cases we are able to work on a more detailed level and carry through the design to get building permits.
Our non-residential projects generally require a strategic consultation phase at the start in order to develop the brief more accurately. This ensures that the brief reflects what is truly wanted by yourselves, the client, as well as any key stakeholders.
About the founder - Jo Aitken
Jo is a European & New Zealand qualified architect and interior designer from New Zealand. She has almost 2 decades of experience working on projects around the world. Key projects that Jo has designed and/or led have won various Architectural Awards including the Asia Pacific Public Service Award, World Architecture Awards Finalist and New Zealand Gold Medal.
Jo spent some years working in Paris, where she worked as a collaborator with top French Architect, Jean Nouvel, and top Austrian Architect, Dietmar Feichtinger. Jo has since been based between Auckland, London and Copenhagen, where she has been working on the design and delivery of a number of public, cultural, commercial and residential projects. During that time Jo has worked on the larger projects with top architecture practices, Patterson Associates, Warren and Mahoney, Monk Mackenzie and Rosan Bosch Studio in Copenhagen. Having worked, lived & studied in Paris, Copenhagen, London, Auckland & Rome, these places have been very influential to her way of designing and way of living. Please click link here to see her Public project experience.
She carried out her initial 8 years of training in Architecture in New Zealand and Italy. She later carried out a 2 year post-graduate Masters in Architecture, specialising in Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship, focusing on creating sustainable, holistic designs with supportive business models, from the Copenhagen Business School and the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture and Design. Along with her Italian Design partner, Letizia Allianelli, they won the DTU Sustainable Circular Societies Start Up Competition in Copenhagen.
As an architect who is passionate about improving our lives through design, Jo was Head of Design Advocacy for the New Zealand Institute of Architects in Auckland, a regular Guest Critic at the University of Auckland and have judged the A+W Awards and New Zealand Interior Awards. With an eye on the future, she became an Ambassador for Microsoft Surface and Hololens.
Embracing Artificial intelligence - How do we do this?
Architects have always used technology to visualise, test and refine ideas — from hand-drafted perspectives, to physical models, to CAD and 3D rendering. Each of these tools changed how quickly and clearly we could explore a design, without changing what design actually is. AI is the next step in that same evolution, and we're adopting it the same way architects have always adopted new tools: gradually, and where it genuinely earns its place.
At the moment, that includes visualisation - helping us create images closer to what we already envision for a project - alongside technical analysis and research into materials and strategies that make a design more sustainable and better suited to its specific climate and site. Used well, it helps us test and refine ideas faster, surfacing options for materiality, performance and site-responsiveness that might otherwise take longer to explore.
What it doesn't do is design. The creative and spatial thinking - the part of our work that responds to a client, a site, a way of living - stays entirely ours. AI supports that process; it doesn't replace it.
Post Production Policy for Images
We also use AI powered rendering (similar to our pre production / concept imagery) in the post-production on photographs of some of our built work. This includes adjusting lighting in photographs taken on overcast days, improving image quality where photos weren't taken by a professional photographer, and, where a site was photographed mid-construction, representing its finished landscaping and setting more clearly. To protect the privacy of our clients and their families, particularly children, we may also replace real people appearing in a photograph with AI-generated figures - but this is mostly done in video footage rather than stills.
In most of these cases, the space, design and materials shown are real and unchanged, AI powered rendering is only used to present the photograph more clearly. Where we've made more significant changes, such as replacing decor or reimagining an interior after a client or another designer has taken over the fit-out, we'll note this directly on the relevant project, along with what was changed and why.