Designing environments of the future requires respect for people and place

12 April 2019 – Caring for people and place, and the essential connectedness between people and their environment is central to the Maori world view and at the heart of New Zealand identity.

It is also a key driver for Aurecon’s new Client Director, Built Environment and Innovation Leader in New Zealand, Tim Hooson. Hooson joins the global engineering and infrastructure advisory company from New Zealand’s largest practice of architects, and urban, workplace and interior designers, Jasmax.

An architect by profession, Hooson has spent 17 years in leadership positions with Jasmax, also heading up the company’s strategy and design thinking group, NotYetKnown, exploring transformational opportunities in the way we work, live and learn.

Engineers and architects design a better world

Hooson believes engineers and architects are in a privileged position to design a better world.

“Designers of future environments need to reflect on how best to create cities, precincts and communities that focus on user empathy and environmental sustainability as a core ethical approach,” he said.

“Designers need humanity and humanity needs designers.”

Aurecon’s Managing Director, Built Environment, John McGuire, said that Hooson would bring a very different lens to interactions with clients.

“His skills in design thinking and strategy will further reinforce the strategic direction that our New Zealand and wider global business has taken in recent times, of being unconventional and creative,” McGuire said.

Hooson will assist Aurecon’s clients to unpack their challenges and find new solutions by identifying the core need, focusing on end goals and creating frameworks that ensure outcomes are aligned to strategy.

Hooson has previously been the Chair of the New Zealand Green Building Council as well as spending time working across Europe and building his own architectural practice. In his spare time, he is deeply involved in the conservation of some of Aotearoa’s (the Maori name for New Zealand) most rare and endangered species and recently was selected as a founding working group member of the Hauraki Coromandel Predator Free Community Trust targeting the government’s ambition for a predator free New Zealand by 2050.