our story
As an award-winning South Island practice, our work seeks to enhance a sense of place – tūrangawaewae. Places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home.
Our beautiful and innovative designs acknowledge the importance of identity and our relationship to others and the connection to our physical spaces we inhabit, whether natural or human-made.
We believe that the best design is not just aware of the environment for which it is designed, but also has a positive impact on it.
We design all our architecture to have a long term benefit on the community it serves, with the smallest possible environmental impact on the land.
Big impact, with a small footprint.
We know the South, it's our home and our place of business. We fundamentally believe in strengthening our local region by providing future ready developments in the South Island and beyond.
Our Christchurch-based studio has collective experience in the design and delivery of quality projects in New Zealand, UK and Europe.
OUR PROCESS
Design
A connection to place is central to our design thinking. Our team approaches all projects as unique, each offer specific design and delivery challenges. We maintain that each project has a distinct connect, both physical and social, with its own integrity, based on client’s needs and expectations.
Over numerous commissions we have fine-tuned a design process which provides a clear and transparent methodology by which all stakeholders are engaged. While our Team has extensive experience in the design and delivery of quality large and small scale multi-purpose projects in New Zealand and abroad, we approach all designs from a first principal basis favouring exploration over accepted ideas and convention.
Our design process is structured to drive for innovative solutions that create better outcomes for all stakeholders. This begins with interrogating the brief to ensure it is meeting the strategic vision for the project and continues throughout the design development and documentation process. Importantly SxSE will look for innovative design solutions that add value in multiple ways.
Collaboration
From stonemason, carpenter to company CEO we look to build relationships and collaborate with people that share a love of their craft and who are passionate about what they do. Fundamental to the success of all projects is to ensure a collaborative, inclusive and collegiate environment is built between the design team, client representatives, stakeholders, consultants and cost and finance expertise.
Getting the consultative process correct from the start is the best way to ensure the critical path of the project runs according to time and budget. Our team has a clear process for communicating and recording the inputs from a wide range of interconnected client and stakeholder groups.
Sustainability
Sustainability has always been a core value for SxSE. Our vision is to enhance our society and environment with beautiful and innovative solutions; and as designers we understand that a holistic world view is essential to creating long-term value.
We work closely with the New Zealand Green Building Council, we integrate sustainable design principles into all of our design concepts, and have worked with a number of clients to help their buildings achieve Green Star ratings.
We ensure sustainable thinking is integrated at the start of our projects to make truly innovative environmentally sustainable outcomes a reality.
OUR PEOPLE
Our Christchurch-based studio brings innovation, creativity, enthusiasm and an absolute dedication to quality design to every project we do.
Our team has collective experience in the design and delivery of quality projects both here in New Zealand and overseas in UK and Europe.
Collaboration and communication is key.
We pride ourselves on having a close-knit team culture both with our colleagues and our clients.
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