Resene is a name that you will no doubt know. Even as a migrant to New Zealand, I became familiar with the Resene name very shortly after arriving, and their iconic black testpots (sometimes filled with paint, sometimes with M&Ms) most likely fill the offices of designers and architects nationwide. The company is known for supporting a multitude of worthy initiatives but perhaps the most important to our industry is their sponsorship of the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) local and national awards programmes – which they’ve been doing for 30 years.

They are “a proudly New Zealand company,” in CEO Nick Nightingale’s words. Resene has been in the Nightingale family since its inception in 1946, started by Nick’s grandfather Ted. The 30th anniversary of the company’s support of the NZIA has “crept up,” Nightingale says. “It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating the 10-year anniversary. Resene has had a long association with the architecture profession, going back virtually to when we started.”

After co-sponsoring the Awards for a few years in the mid-’90s, the company was asked to become the sole sponsor. “Due to the close personal relationship that my father, [who was in charge at the time], had with Gordon Moller and others in the profession, we did. We wanted to put something back into the profession that had done so much for us as a business, who were supporters of us as a fledgling company in New Zealand. We felt that the architecture awards programme was an excellent vehicle for that.”

Why maintain such a close relationship throughout all these years? Nightingale attributes the family-owned-and-operated nature of the business to its ability to take a longer-term view of things. “I’d describe it as a symbiotic relationship,” he says. “We get as much from the architecture profession as, hopefully, they get from us. A lot of the products and systems and colours we’ve developed have been a result of our relationship with architects. The mere fact that we focus so much on colour as a key part of our business is because of architects.”

Nightingale fondly tells a story of architects Dave Launder and, he thinks, Gordon Moller – “but don’t hold me to that” – coming into his father Tony’s office in the mid-’60s with the British Standard 101 colour range, after a trip to the UK. The range was developed to create consistency in colour among the Commonwealth countries. He explains that colours had to be premixed in the factory at that time (unlike today, where in-store tinting machines are at our fingertips), so there was a limit as to how many colours could be offered to specifiers. Tony decided to create the whole British Standard chart, which provided a number of technical challenges. “But, it was the largest colour chart produced at the time, and it came about purely because the architects were pushing for it.”

Indeed, just as innovation is ever at the fore of architecture and design, Resene has built its name on pushing the boundaries of paint technology in both durability and usability. The relationship between the company and the profession seems to be symbiotic in this regard as well. “There have been many examples of how architects have influenced our product development,” Nightingale recalls Ian Athfield specifying burgundy-hued roofs for fire stations, which had faded into purple within six months, as all the red tint in the paint was scorched by New Zealand’s harsh UV rays. “We said we’d fix it, but that we’d need a couple of months to figure out how,” he says. “We had to develop a new tinting technology and new pigments.” The company continues today to improve on existing products and create new ones – often based on the way architects and designers use them throughout the country. 

While Resene and its affiliated brands now produce a wide variety of products, colour remains the link that ties them all together, according to Nightingale. “We’ve tried to make it easy for architects to specify colour and be exciting with it, and I genuinely think you don’t come across anything like New Zealand buildings globally [in terms of colour]. But, behind that, there is a whole lot of work that goes into those hues: new bases, new tints. We’re always on the lookout for new ways of doing things.” 

Perhaps this is why the partnership between Resene and the architecture and design industries has persevered all these years: each is driven by a desire to make New Zealand’s built environment better and more colourful.

Resene celebrates 30 years of supporting the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) Architecture Awards in 2020 – both for the eight local branches as well as the national programme, whose winners will be announced on 4 November 2020.