Chris Tate could never have predicted that building and designing his own home would lead to an award-winning, international career.
The Ngatea-based architectural designer has been making a splash both in New Zealand and abroad, with his recently-completed project, the Piha beach home “Bunker House”, collecting a stack of prestigious accolades.
Bunker House won the 2025 New Zealand Home of The Year award for its striking blend of engineering and appearance. The house also won the 2025 TIDA International Home of The Year Awards, received Gold at the 2025 New Zealand BEST Awards, and was one of only 11 New Zealand projects featured on the 460-strong shortlist at the 2025 World Architecture Awards in Miami.
Bunker House was praised in judges’ comments from the various awards for its boldness and innovative construction.
Chris and his wife Fiona, who run the architectural design company from their family farm, have a reputation for modern, clean lines and designs which look amazing, complement their surroundings, and are straightforward to build. But Chris said he fell into the career by chance.
“It wasn’t my intended pathway – I had a degree in social sciences,” Chris said.
“But I designed and built my own home when I was in my early 20s. People had seen it and said, well, that’s really good.”
Before long, Chris found himself being mentored by NZ architect Richard Priest.
“He really encouraged me to do this,” Chris said.
“So I did a drafting course at Unitec for two years.
“I built another house, in a rainforest in Titirangi, while I was in the last year of my course. There were no real walls – it was just a glass box in a forest. And I built that to show people what I could do.”
The Forest House made its way onto magazine covers and into architecture journals, Chris said, paving the way for his new career. It’s been an amazing, rewarding journey, he said, and the best thing about it has been the fact that he is able to do it all from Ngatea.
“The way technology is now, I can work from anywhere,” Chris said.
“I’ve got this amazing, international life that architecture’s given me, I’ve been all around the world with it… and still living on the humble family farm in Ngatea. It’s amazing.”
Chris is passionate about Ngatea and has done a lot of community-focused work as well. He’s heavily involved with the Kerepēhi Brass Band, and is currently designing an upcoming upgrade to the band hall. He also teaches an introductory architecture module at Hauraki Plains College.
“It’s kind of fun and it’s not too serious. We do a little design project together,” Chris said.
“I do a lecture at the start of each class. You know, this is the building code and this is the design and this is the plan – just different components. Not too much, just a little taste of it.”
Chris said he wanted to show his students that success is always possible.
“We can still run the farm and live here, but we’ve got a really good job as well,” he said.
“I’m quite focused on that with them too – you can do anything.”
