ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, Unitec 2001
Masters of Landscape Architecture, Unitec 2006

​EXPERTISE:
Pete’s role is primarily that of principal designer but includes a variety of logistical and managerial aspects. Work to date ranges from environmental design to residential and large scale urban projects. In his work Pete focuses on strong contextual connections to local site design. He experiments with representational strategies that attempt to uncover important relationships about how site, people, context, and location interact.

FIELDLA2 is a studio based landscape architectural practice committed to activating site conditions in order to generate landscapes that animate spaces.  This approach involves emphasis on both the local and the contextual and allows for an enthusiastic attention to relationships between everyday life and the situations we populate.

The firm has a combined design experience exceeding 30 years and has gained a reputation as a contemporary design studio, nestled firmly within both research and professional practice.

The combined diverse experience of the founding partners provides a comprehensive knowledge base, specialising in local and exotic vegetation, conceptual design strategies and design realisation. FIELDLA2 are developing a unique and recognisable response to the challenges associated with design in the contemporary realm.

To stay current and connected Pete spends time occupied in research. This enables a rich engagement with current theory and practice and takes the form of peer reviewed papers in xsectionjournal, a collaborative annual landscape journal exploring different themes in landscape architecture.  Pete also leads the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture programme at Unitec Institute of Technology, and teaches from year one to masters level supervision.

FIELDLA2 is invested in Multidisciplinary Collaboration where a diverse range of practitioners, including ecologists, surveyors, construction experts and architects, form teams to tackle wide ranging design potentials.

Public Open Space: The way we work includes understanding the landscape as an assemblage of collisions between contextual situations, development, productivity, circulation and everyday activities. This suggests a way of working which keys into the very life of the site; an approach that readily allows for confrontation between existing and potential, engaging the landscape as a tool for design.  It is an approach that allows the landscape to provide the program for projects and the emergence of design through enquiry.

A Strategic Approach to Design: Flowing through all cities are a network of systems. Some examples of these are people flow, electronic information transferal, industrial and commercial activity, tourism, economics, topographical, hydrological and ecological information. The assemblage of these systems makes up the operating city. At various times and places in the city these systems come together to create points of intensity; strategic thinking allows these systems to unfold and enables the connection of people to places

FIELDLA2 uses the same design methodology for small scale residential landscapes, where design is essentially a collaboration. The contextual situation, mark-making, critique and a range of design processes and propositions about place, culture and the environment are explored. Excitement and curiosity are essential components in the design process. Through being experimental and thinking in an abstract manner about a problem, design technique is combined with research in order to create unique private spaces.