News
Meet Peter Kensington
Posted 28 11 2017
in News
Planner + Landscape Architect at KPLC Limited
Tēnā koutou katoa
Ko Tararua te māunga
Ko Manawatu te awa
Nō Muriwai Beach ahau
Ko Peter Kensington tōku ingoa
Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa
Greetings all, my name is Peter Kensington and I’m originally from the wind farm capital of New Zealand, the Manawatu. I now live beside the takapu at Muriwai Beach, in an ‘outstanding landscape’ on the coast north-west of Auckland.
Thank you to Vicki for suggesting that I contribute a member profile page for the NZILA. Now is certainly a time of reflection for me and it has been rewarding to turn my mind to what it is that I have achieved and what I am still yet to achieve.
I’m a great believer in fate and that things happen to us for a reason. In that vein, my life journey has been one of following my nose, with life’s experiences and the various chapters falling into place wonderfully.
As a youth, I managed to see quite a bit of the country playing hockey for Manawatu through the age groups and for my Palmerston North Boys High School teams. Probably that insight into the fact that there was more to the world outside PN, gave me the incentive to spread my wings when it was time to leave school in the late 80s.
I wasn’t really too sure what it was that I wanted to do for a career. On enrolment day at Massey University, the queue for the Business Studies department (I was enrolled in a BBS) was hundreds of people long. I had a good look around the rest of the university, ending up in the Geography department where the displays about the land and regional planning sparked my interest – plus the queue was short!
Half-way through my planning degree, when I was gaining practical experience with the Christchurch City Council planning policy team, I sat next to a couple of landscape architects in that office. This was a profession that I’d never heard of before, but it inspired me. Rather than jump into landscape architecture immediately, I decided to complete my planning degree before entering the two-year post-graduate landscape architecture degree at Lincoln University. This was a character building period of my life where the ‘all-nighters’ prepared me well for later when raising children.
After a couple more years with the Christchurch City Council on completion of my studies, I embarked on a two-year OE in 1997, working in bars and offices (of global investment banks). I very much enjoyed seeing the world and realised however that ‘we don’t know how lucky we are’ in Aotearoa.
Initially thinking that I might forge a career in Wellington, an opportunity came up with Boffa Miskell in their Auckland office. I’d never imagined living in Auckland, but I thought – let’s give it six months and see how it goes. Well I’m still here after all this time, however I’m always mindful that there is more to this country than what goes on between the Bombay and Brynderwyn hills!
During these last 18-years, I have enjoyed my time with both Boffa Miskell and Auckland Council. Early on I was an active member of the NZILA Auckland Branch and I have been fortunate enough to spend some time on the national Executive Committee as well as being involved with our publications. I am proud that I have become a Registered NZILA Landscape Architect as well as a Member of the New Zealand Planning Institute.
The Muriwai Beach landscape and community feels like home, but we’re not quite locals yet – I understand that we need to be for here a minimum of ten years! I enjoy doing my bit with the local volunteer fire brigade and raising two spectacularly talented children with my amazing wife. Certainly, the fire brigade ‘stuff’ has helped to put life (and death) into perspective for me.
My time commitment to the fire brigade has enriched me, as well as making sure that I don’t put all of my energy into one thing (i.e. work) and I am of the opinion that we should all volunteer our time in any way that we can. To those of you currently volunteering your time for others (including for the NZILA) – thank you!
Throughout my day-to-day work, I pride myself in being able to achieve sustainable management outcomes for the landscape, bit-by-bit, at a range of scales. The challenge for us as a profession, as I see it, is to educate our wider society on the importance of landscape to our country. In my opinion, we need strong central government leadership on landscape so that our message can be promoted and so, one day, landscape will become an everyday term that people understand and value. In this way, we will all be effective kaitiaki and work together to achieve sustainable management of our landscape.
Many of you will know that I’ve recently started my own planning and landscape consultancy which I’m hoping will mean that I can strike a good balance between work, whanau, volunteering and surfing. I’m a few weeks into it now and I have really missed the daily two hours of commuting – yeah right!
Thank you for taking the time to read my pito kōrero. I’m looking forward to the next chapters in my journey, including the challenges and opportunities that will arise along the way. Look after yourselves, others, your landscape and our landscape.
Noho ora mai
Peter