About

Graeme North has over 5 decades experience with hundreds of architectural projects to his credit as the architect, or as a consultant.

His work can be found from Otago to Northland, garnering him both a national and international reputation for his design of natural buildings.  

He specialised in designs that used a wide range of earth and other natural materials and appropriate building technology and although he has now retired from active design work, he still offers specialist assistance or peer review in these specialties for other owners, designers and/or Building Consent authorities. 

Graeme also mentors owner-building at all stages. 

He promotes the use of locally sourced,  minimally processed natural materials that have low embodied energy, or are carbon sequestering.

Graeme is also interested in the integrated relationship between productive plants and buildings in the areas we mostly live in, a concept that incorporates permaculture principles, a concept he calls “livingscapes”.

In 2007 he was made a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Architecture, and in 2010 he received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to investigate setting up an appropriate building technology centre to be the hub of a national organization to research and educate about the use of natural materials and appropriate technology.

In 2020 he was made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to architecture and natural building standards.

He is also a writer, sculptor, and photographer. To see examples of his architecture, sculpture, writings, or photographs please follow these links.