Sam Kebbell
Architect and Educator

The most exciting thing about practising in New Zealand is the potential for our own insignificance. There is so much anxiety about sliding off the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that it produces an urgency to reconnect ourselves to bigger populations and bigger economies, but at the same time our enthusiasm for isolation, solitude and independence has us blocking the roads back in. This civil tug-of-war between our collective commitment to connect with the other continents, and simultaneously keep our distance, is great fuel for cultural producers of all kinds. It's hard to find a place to practise with a healthy tension, lots of the world feels either too fat and complacent, or too far gone and dangerous. We're bloody lucky really.