RTA Studio Limited

Founded in 1999 by Richard Naish, RTA Studio is a practice that focuses on delivering exceptional design with a considered and personal service. Our work aims to make a lasting contribution to the urban and natural context by challenging, provoking and delighting. With 38 staff based in our Auckland and Hawkes Bay Studio’s, we work on projects nationwide.

RTA Studio are constantly working within the realms of public, commercial and urban design as well as sensitive residential projects and are committed to a sustainable built environment at the forefront of developing carbon neutral buildings. We are aware of the significant role Architects have to play in influencing the impact buildings have on our environment, be it responding to the site, consideration of material selection, construction methodology, landfill diversion, building energy use, and whole of life considerations.

RTA Studio are members of the New Zealand Green Building Council and are recognized as industry leaders in the integration of sustainability into architecture. We designed New Zealand’s first 5 star As Built rated Greenstar Commercial Building, IRONBANK. Our C3 house, which achieves zero carbon emissions from embodied energy, operating energy use and zero waste upon deconstruction at end of life, won the Sustainability Category of the MIPM Architectural Review Future Projects Award, as well as the Future Projects House Category of the World Architecture Festival. The recently opened Scion HUB ‘Te Whare Nui o Tuteata’, designed in collaboration with Irving Smith Architects, has been independently assessed as having zero embodied carbon at the end of construction.

RTA Studio were founding signatories to the Aotearoa New Zealand Architects Declare Climate & Biodiversity Emergency and our Directors have made a commitment to keep the practice in line with New Zealand’s own pledge to become a carbon-zero country by 2050. As a business we need to produce less carbon every year and so by managing, tracking and reducing; petrol consumption, flights, recycling and investing in carbon credits as the necessary basics, we can achieve this realistically and well within that timeframe.