Pete Bossley’s architectural career provides compelling confirmation that accomplishment is usually the child of adventure. Enthusiastic and optimistic, he has made his own professional way, always ready to meet challenges and never daunted by difficulties.
In the singularity of his solutions, his determination to explore the unique possibilities of every project, his willingness to experiment, his evident enjoyment of the craft of architecture and his sheer tenacity, he epitomises so many of the admirable qualities of his calling. He is an ‘architect’s architect’, right down to his enviable facility with pencil and brush, and the élan with which he pursues his vocation and lives his life.
Many of Pete’s talents were apparent when he was a student at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture in the 1970s, a lively era in the School’s history, and therefore a congenial environment for a questioning temperament. Teachers and contemporaries recall Pete’s quickness and clarity of thought, his design fluency and his flair for the unorthodox – all traits that have characterised his practice. Testament to his audacity and ambition was the practice he set up with several fellow graduates, all of them barely out of the School. In a few years, Pete moved from altering villas and bungalows to designing the large and complex Heatley House in St Heliers [completed 1985], a building to which he has subsequently added [2002, 2011-].
In many ways, Pete’s architectural work is suggestive of his personality. Buildings such as the Parnell Post Office [1996] and the Voyager National Maritime Museum [2009] in Auckland are outgoing and engaging: in the words of one of his peers, “they want to say hello”.
Pete’s serious take on having fun could have no better expression than Rainbow’s End [1988], the South Auckland amusement park that was an early project. His perseverance and fortitude have had no stronger test than the design of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa [1997], New Zealand’s most significant building of the late 20th century, on which he partnered during his years with Jasmax.
