Stuart Houghton celebrates 20 Years

Urban designer Stuart Houghton has played a lead role in dozens of high-profile and award-winning projects, most notably those that have profoundly influenced the changing form of Auckland’s City Centre.

Stuart Houghton started out as a landscape architect in our Wellington office – where Frank Boffa and Boyden Evans had spotted his youthful talent. He relocated to Auckland after a couple of years and worked extensively alongside John Goodwin and Rachel de Lambert.

Stuart took the opportunity to draw on Boffa Miskell’s study grant and pursue his Master of Urban Design at the Bartlett School in London; returning after two years away with an additional skill set, qualification and worldly experience. 

For his Master’s thesis, Stuart considered how Auckland’s central motorway junction could be repurposed into a public space offering multiple benefits. Stuart's concept (The Ring: Public space armatures for a 21st century Auckland) combined green space, environmental stormwater infrastructure, walkways and cycleways, community, recreational and arts facilities around a continuous circle of gully and waterfront land that encircles the city centre.

The project was recognised at the 2009 NZILA Awards, earning a Silver Award for Landscape Design – Visionary Landscapes.

“It was clear early on that Stuart was especially thoughtful, cognisant of, and interested in what makes urban places tick and how best to bring positive influence in the work he was doing for our clients and with our collaborators,” says Boffa Miskell partner Marc Baily.  

In the fifteen years to follow, Stuart played a lead role in dozens of high-profile and award-winning projects, most notably those that have profoundly influenced the changing form of Auckland’s City Centre.

Seconded to Auckland Council Built Environment Unit, Stuart was part of the core team responsible for production of the 2012 Auckland City Centre Masterplan.

The Auckland East-West Transport Study (2012 – 2014) examined Auckland’s key transportation corridors (Quay Street, Fanshawe Street, Customs Street, Beach Road, Victoria Street, Wellesley Street, Mayoral Drive, and Cook Street); bringing together the vision of the City Centre Masterplan and the New Network for Auckland’s buses while maintaining appropriate access and capacity for general traffic.

These two projects presaged the transformation of the Auckland city centre over the following decade.

After winning the Landscape Planning and Environmental Studies category at the 2015 NZILA Awards, City East-West Transport Study was recognised with the Charlie Challenger Supreme Award, for outstanding achievement in landscape planning.

In 2016 Stuart undertook a research project which applied the Transport for London 'Valuing the Urban Realm Toolkit' to three Auckland City Centre case studies, to gauge its potential use in a New Zealand context.

The City Centre Masterplan 2020 (CCMP2020) refreshed the much-lauded original CCMP2012, which helped guide the remarkable people- and place-led regeneration of Auckland’s City Centre. The CCMP 2020 sets out the refreshed vision for a more inclusive, accessible and sustainable Tāmaki Makaurau.

“Stuart's work on the Auckland City Centre Masterplan when I was but a fledgling at Auckland Council was what made me want to work for Boffa Miskell,” says urban design Miriam Moore. “He’s a public realm legend for sure!”

Stuart had a lead role within the core team for Auckland Design Office creating the digital refresh of the City Centre Masterplan, including incorporation of new Access for Everyone concepts, climate change response and other key concepts for the refresh, and the development of high-quality 3D model visualisations integrating and conveying key transformational moves and opportunities.

“Initiatives like the Valuing the Public Realm toolkit and Stuart’s contributions to the Aotearoa Urban Street Planning and Design Guide are great examples of the kind of leadership that makes a difference,” says landscape architect Frazer Baggaley.

“It’s inspiring to see leaders within Boffa Miskell championing projects like these. Stuart’s work continues to raise the bar for urban design, both within the company and across Urban Design nationally.” 

The Aotearoa Urban Street Planning and Design Guide is a framework for delivering on movement and place and shaping the form and function of urban streets in Aotearoa. Over a four-year timeline Stuart led the Boffa Miskell project team, which worked closely with the NZTA Waka Kotahi client leads, and national and international subject matter experts and stakeholders, to produce a clear, well-presented and high-quality document. 

Once again, Stuart’s work was recognised with a Charlie Challenger Supreme Award, along with winning the Masterplanning and Urban Design category at the 2024 NZILA Awards.

In his role as Technical Lead for Urban Design within Boffa Miskell, Stuart’s mentoring and leadership inspires his colleagues.

“Stuart is always calm and considered. His insights are always well thought-through, and his feedback strikes a balance between being constructive, reflective, and forward-looking,” says Frazer Baggaley. “He has an innate skill for asking insightful questions, often the ones the rest of us are still trying to form in our heads.

“He brings intelligence, clarity, and integrity to everything he does, and always with just the right touch of slightly dry humour to keep things grounded.”

Marc Baily says, “Stuart can rightfully take all the credit for the energy he has put into where he is at now in the urban design world within Aotearoa. He has contemporary and Aotearoa-specific ideas and opinions founded on experience; connections and collaborative relationships; and he contributes these to the incremental process that brings positive urban change within our towns and cities.”