FEATURED PROJECT: Nick's Head Station, New Zealand
Nick’s Head Station is a 2,000-acre sheep station of outstanding historic significance. The white cliffs of the station were first sited by Captain Cook’s crew when they discovered New Zealand in 1769. This same site was the landing point for the Hurotu Canoe of the Great Migration of the Maori people in the year 1100. Nelson Byrd Woltz has been commissioned to design a Master Plan for the station that will assure a productive farming operation while repairing ecological damage including near total deforestation, loss of 40 acres of wetlands, and serious erosion due in part to over-grazing. With the completion of the Master Plan, the area of grazed land will be reduced by 30% (without reduced productivity due to improved farming techniques) while several acres of wetlands will be restored and an enclosed wildlife sanctuary will be established at the end of the Nick’s Head promontory. Inside the enclosure, 50,000 native trees have been planted and several native animals are being introduced as the ecosystem becomes established. This year gray-faced petrel chicks will be released inside the enclosure. At the end of ten years, once the sanctuary becomes pest-free and self-sustaining, the nearly extinct Tuatara, once widespread in the New Zealand forest and now the only remaining lizard species in its genus, will be released into the enclosure.

New Zealand has suffered extraordinary environmental degradation during the past 100 years. Over 90% of wetlands have been drained; lowland forest areas have been reduced by 85% of what they were before Maori settlement; and 90% of the tall tussock grassland that existed in 1840 has been erased. Protection of indigenous habitats and biological diversity is the number one goal of the New Zealand government’s Environment 2010 Strategy. The local press is extolling this project as a model for sustainable farming practices. The sheep station has already become a destination for local environmental groups, international students, and local farmers. A forestry contractor who is working on the project is exuberant: “I ran these hills as a youngster and to see what is going on here is an unreal feeling – we are up here to restore what our ancestors cleared away…I have never experienced anything like this. The local people could never have done this”.

OTHER NEWS

October
The firm’s landscape design for a residence in Albemarle County, Virginia is the subject of the article entitled “Conversation Piece ” in the October issue of House & Garden magazine.

September
Elizabeth Kaleida joined the New York office.

June-July
Anne Bohlen, David Timmerman, and Jeremy Jordan join NBWLA in the Charlottesville office.

May
The Dell at the University of Virginia was one of seven projects selected for an Honor Award by the Virginia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects annual Inform Awards program. The jury - Robert Ivey FAIA, Margaret Helfand FAIA, and Marc Tsurumaki - summed up their comments as follows:

It's a fantastic project. What's exciting is it was generated by a need to deal with stormwater management, and they've done it so explicitly. There is also a lovely interplay between the formal and geometric edge with the organic, naturalistic motif. And then there are these very poetic moments, where things almost touch but do not. It's beautifully detailed.

April
Kathy Kambic joins the Charlottesville office.