JKBA- Judi Keith-Brown Architects is a small boutique architectural office based in a Victorian villa in Te Aro, it is a shared studio space, a smaller and more intimate version of the earlier Drawing Office.
JKBA is led by Judi Keith-Brown, Registered Architect and Immediate Past President of Te Kāhui Whaihanga, the New Zealand Institute of Architects. Our Practice shares a studio with Robin Simpson Design- Urban designers and Landscape architects and Claudia Baron, Registered Architect.
JKBA work very closely with our clients to design something that works for them on all levels bringing to their projects our own design methods, ideas, aesthetics and influences, as well as working in with those of our clients, the house or site, and the wider surrounds. We also have good long-standing relationships with a tight group of builders and sub-contractors.
Judi Keith-Brown
When I first graduated I worked for Dave Launder before heading over to Glasgow for 3 years. When I came back I worked briefly for John Daish and went on to teach 4th year design at the School of Architecture for 10 years, before going back into private practice in 2007.
I have worked on a wide range of projects from new houses, to the restoration of a Grade A listed historic building in Scotland, to public housing, but now mainly work on residential projects here in Wellington and in Hawkes Bay.
While most of the influences I am inspired by are modernist, Scandinavian and Japanese I also like working with the proportions and simple planning and detailing of Victorian villas and cottages and the modernist houses of the 1960’s and 70’s.
It is important to me that architecture is not just about how a house looks but also how it functions, how comfortable it is to live and work in, that there are places to sit, to eat, to curl up in the sun, and that a house is most of all a home.
Judi became the president of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in May 2020.
“To make something different is not great art. But to give pleasure, that is design.”
