“At Beca, we have the opportunity to work for rewarding projects such as schools, touching many aspects of community and family life."
Pieter joined Beca in 1981 as a qualified architect from Delft, The Netherlands. Almost 30 years later, he is involved in a number of roles including directing and managing projects, guiding the wider Beca Architects team, client relationship management and hands-on architecture work.
Most of Pieter’s clients are in the Institutional arena (including specialist facilities for the Royal NZ Foundation of the Blind, and many colleges and schools within New Zealand and the Pacific), and he continues to be highly involved in master planning and designing schools – a specialisation that has developed since working as a registered architect in New Zealand.
His leaning towards education began with undertaking a master plan and building designs for Saint Kentigern School in Remuera, Auckland. “The Junior Building we designed 25 years ago is still considered a very good building today,” he says. In the early nineties Pieter won the master planning and design work for a new “Greenfield” 1200 pupil campus for the British International School in Jakarta, and Beca is still working for the school to date (a new Performing Arts Center and a new Library were recently completed). Since the mid nineties, he has assisted the Academic Colleges Group (ACG) with its expansion. In particular, the new 1000 pupil Parnell College was recently completed as was Stage 1 of the new Art and Technology building at Strathallan College (the final stage is scheduled for completion later this year) and the conversion of a six-level central city building into a school that will eventually accommodate up to 1200 international students is ongoing.
Pieter’s project work extends to a number of Pacific island nations. Pieter and the Beca Architects team have built around 1,500 classroom seats in the Marshall Islands over the past eight years. Beca also won a large commission for the Federated States of Micronesia and is now assisting on schools and hospitals there. Pieter is currently developing a master plan for the College of the Northern Marianas in Saipan.
Pieter enjoys working with clients and developing relationships with the end users of the facilities he designs. “All our clients have very specific requirements; and I believe the way we try to work in close collaboration with the end user of the facility sets us apart from other architecture firms.”