In Practice: Abdallah Alayan

Introducing In Practice—a new series of conversations with the makers shaping what comes next for New Zealand design. Few countries this small produce work this good, and that's worth shouting about. Each practice or individual has been chosen for the calibre and originality of their thinking, not necessarily their scale or recognition. The conversations trace how they got here, what's shaped their practice, and where they're headed next.

Our first conversation is with an architect fascinated by the details most people walk past: the alignment of a tile, the fall of light across a room, the intricate decisions made at the scale of a millimetre. Abdallah Alayan has recently been appointed a Principal at Monk Mackenzie and has been with the practice for almost four years, but his fascination with design began much earlier, with a childhood immersed in building things.

We met him at Palimpsest House, a recent Monk Mackenzie project at Te Arai, to talk about the long, patient arc of a life in architecture. What emerged was a conversation less about buildings than about an acute attention to detail, an instinct he has had his whole life.

Some of Alayan's earliest memories are of hours spent building perfectly symmetrical Lego towers. The real turn came later, while studying his older brother's high school technical drawings

"I remember seeing a floor plan pinned up on his bedroom wall and becoming obsessed with the idea of blueprints. I would have been about seven or eight, and that's where everything unravelled for me."

Alayan grew up in Christchurch, a city known for its mid-century modernism and studied architecture in Auckland. Monk Mackenzie had been on his radar since university, when speculative renders of the Foodstuffs headquarters were circulating in group chats.

"There were renders of an atrium that looked like it couldn't possibly be in New Zealand. It wasn't a real project at the time, but I was so inspired by the idea of New Zealand work being that bold."

If there is a lesson he wishes he could hand back to that seven-year-old, it is patience.

"Because I knew so young what I wanted to do, I probably had this idea that it should all happen really quickly, and obviously it doesn't. Architecture, especially construction, is such a long game. I'm still reassuring myself about that to this day."

His method is intuitive rather than referential. He is less interested in mood boards, working instead from experience, travel, and above all the people a project is for.

The single space that shaped his sense of what architecture could do was the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a building he had studied and sketched long before he stood inside it.

"Actually experiencing that space was one of the most profound architectural experiences I've ever had. It wasn't about the religiosity of the building, it was all about the feeling in there."

What stayed with him was the sheer generosity of its making, a building constructed over centuries.

"It's not about one person getting it finished in their lifetime. It's for a greater purpose, letting go of the KPIs of a building."

That patience shapes how he reads his own peers, too. He is wary of claiming any generation invents something wholly new, but he senses a loosening underway: a return to maximalism and a little more fun. He credits much of it to more open-minded clients, who give young designers room for an adventurous edge "that maybe previous generations were less brave to show."

That same openness shows up in his choice of materials. He is drawn to natural materials, and to those "that aren't obvious in terms of what they are," believing the site itself should often dictate the palette. Pressed on what might quietly give away his hand in a finished room, he resists the idea of a signature style, reaching instead for something less visible.

"There's probably a timelessness and a monumentality that I'm always aiming for, but on top of that, it's precision, composition and consideration. Everything being thought through, those junctions down to the millimetre."

For all the talk of alignments and finishes, the principle he returns to is not a design one at all.

"Fundamentally, I think respect. Beyond design. Respect for the client's brief, for the many voices that shape a project. That's a huge part of what I try to bring, something I hope to never let go of."

To any architecture student, his advice is characteristically steady: the work is hard, the subjectivity harder, but the spark survives.

"You can get to a point quite quickly where that spark you had while studying can be reignited. See every opportunity for what it is, an opportunity to learn, and just grab it by the horns."

What lingers is Alayan's insistence that good design is ultimately an act of respect: for the site, for the brief, and for the people who will one day live inside it. In his view, the grand gesture and the powder room deserve the same consideration, and the true measure of a space is not how it photographs but how it feels to move through.

For a younger generation finding its footing, the message is quietly reassuring - good things take time. It is a philosophy built for the long game, one that suggests the most interesting chapters of Abdallah Alayan's work are still to come.