Renovation Architects vs. New Build Architects: Key Differences Explained
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Quick answer: No New Zealand law says a renovation needs a registered architect. Renovation architects, licensed designers and chartered engineers can all draw one, but design of a house’s structure or weathertight envelope must come from someone licensed for it.
The person who draws your renovation decides more than how it looks. Their drawings decide whether the beam sizes survive the engineer, whether the consent goes through without a stack of council questions, and whether a builder can price the job without a page of exclusions. On a bare section in Albany, the designer starts with survey pegs and a blank sheet. On a 1920s bungalow in Mt Eden, they start with a house nobody has measured properly in decades, framing nobody has seen, and possibly work a previous owner never consented. Same profession, very different job.
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That gap is why renovation architects and new-build architects are worth telling apart, and why the title on the business card matters less than the licence behind it. In New Zealand the word “architect” is protected by law, the design of a house’s structure is restricted work, and plenty of good renovation design is done by people who are not architects at all.
Renovation architects vs new-build architects: where the work differs
Both start from the same training and the same Building Code. The difference is what they inherit. A new-build designer inherits a section: its slope, its sun, its wind exposure and the district plan rules that sit over it. A renovation designer inherits all of that plus a building, and the building usually has opinions of its own.
Measuring what is already there
Older Auckland houses rarely come with usable plans. A villa in Grey Lynn or a state house in Point Chevalier may have little on the council file beyond a drainage plan and a few old permits. So the first job on a renovation is a measured survey: wall positions, ceiling heights, floor levels that have drifted, window sizes, the line of the roof. Every later decision sits on those measurements, and a renovation designer who skips them is guessing.
The council property file is the other half of the picture. It shows what was consented, what was signed off and what was not. Our free feasibility report asks you to apply for the property file before the assessment for exactly that reason: the architectural designer reviewing your project reads it first.
Hidden structure and unconsented work
Imagine opening a wall in a 1950s weatherboard house in Onehunga to widen a doorway, and finding the lintel was never sized for the load above it, or that a previous owner moved a bearing wall without a consent. A new-build designer never meets that problem. A renovation designer plans for it. They ask for investigation openings early, leave room in the design for an engineer’s answer, and expect the drawings to change once the linings come off.
It’s also the reason a renovation designer stays on the job after the consent is issued. If the drawings change once work starts, the change may need council approval as an amendment to the building consent (section 45(4) of the Building Act sets out what that application has to include), and someone has to draw it.
Older houses can also hide hazardous materials in their claddings, linings and floor coverings. Before anything is cut or sanded, read our guide to testing for asbestos before an older house is opened up, because a positive result changes the programme before it changes the design.
💡 Quick tip: Apply for your property file before the first design meeting. A designer who has read it can tell you in the first hour which parts of your house were consented, which weren’t, and what that means for the plan.
Joining new to old
The hardest drawing on most renovations is the junction. Where a new extension meets a 100-year-old weatherboard wall, the designer has to tie new framing into old, carry the roof line through, and keep water out at a join that two eras of building never expected to share. Floor levels rarely match. Old rimu flooring has to meet new. Cladding profiles from the 1920s may no longer be made.
Matching the look is only part of it. New materials also have to work with the old structure and the existing weathertight envelope, not just sit beside them. That’s where renovation experience shows up in a set of drawings: in the details at the joins, not in the renders.
What a new-build designer does instead
A new-build architect or designer spends the early weeks on the site itself: orientation, views, ground conditions, stormwater, and the zone rules that limit height and boundary setbacks. Their constraint is the section and the plan rules. Their freedom is that nothing on site has to be kept. If your project is a full knock-down and rebuild, that skill set fits better than a renovation specialist’s, and it pays to make that call before anyone starts drawing.
Architect, architectural designer or LBP designer: what the titles mean in NZ
Search for a renovation architect in Auckland and you’ll find registered architects, architectural designers, draughting services and design-and-build companies, often described in the same words. The law separates them more cleanly than the marketing does.
Who can call themselves an architect
Section 7 of the Registered Architects Act 2005 says no person who designs buildings, prepares plans and specifications or supervises construction may use the title “architect” unless they are a registered architect. A breach is an offence with a fine of up to $10,000. The New Zealand Registered Architects Board keeps the register, and its fact sheet on using the title makes two points that trip people up. A firm can’t be an architect; only a registered person can. And designers who aren’t registered can lawfully call themselves architectural designers or building designers.
That’s why we describe Sonder Architecture’s people as architectural designers. It’s the accurate title, and it says nothing either way about the quality of the work.
What restricted building work means for the design
Some design work is restricted building work, or RBW. Under clause 6 of the Building (Definition of Restricted Building Work) Order 2011, it includes preparing the drawings and specifications for building or altering the primary structure of a house, and its external moisture-management system. The Order defines primary structure as the parts meant to carry vertical or horizontal loads, such as beams, bracing, columns, foundations, the roof, subfloor framing and walls. The moisture-management system takes in cladding, roofing, damp-proofing and waterproofing.
Section 84 of the Building Act 2004 says all restricted building work must be carried out or supervised by a licensed building practitioner licensed for that work. Section 45 adds that when a consent application contains RBW design, the plans must come with a certificate of work from the licensed practitioner who did or supervised that design. The certificate identifies the work and states that it complies with the Building Code, or lists any waivers or modifications it needs.
Important note: Whether your renovation needs a building consent, and which parts of its design are restricted building work, is a question for a Licensed Building Practitioner or Auckland Council. This guide explains how the rules are written; it doesn’t decide them for your house.
The LBP Design licence and its three areas of practice
Licensed designers hold the Design licence, assessed in one of three areas of practice. These replaced the old Design 1, 2 and 3 classes on 1 April 2010, under the Building (Designation of Building Work Licensing Classes) Order 2010. The LBP licensing classes page lines each area of practice up with a building category, and the Order’s schedule defines the categories:
| Design area of practice | Building category | What the 2010 Order says about that category |
|---|---|---|
| Area of practice 1 | Category 1 | A single home (use SH, sleeping single home) whose building envelope has a total risk score of 12 or less on every external elevation; not an outbuilding or ancillary building |
| Area of practice 2 | Category 2 | Any building that is neither category 1 nor category 3, which includes a single home with a higher risk score |
| Area of practice 3 | Category 3 | A building that is not a single home and is 10 metres or more high, measured between the floors of its lowest and highest storeys |
Two details matter for a homeowner. The LBP page says an LBP isn’t restricted to their area of practice: they can take on any work their licence class covers, but only work they are competent to do. And the 2010 Order treats registered architects as licensed in Design (area of practice 3), and chartered professional engineers as licensed in Design and Site (both area of practice 3), for as long as their registration is current.
💡 Quick tip: Ask any designer for their LBP number or their architect registration, then check it on the public LBP register or the NZRAB register. Section 289 of the Building Act requires an LBP to show you evidence of their licence if you ask.
Do you need an architect for a renovation?
Usually, no. You need a designer licensed for the restricted parts of the work, and the right one for the size and risk of the job. Whether that’s a registered architect, an LBP designer, or an architectural designer whose restricted work is supervised by an LBP is your choice, not a legal requirement.
Work that may need no designer at all
A like-for-like kitchen or bathroom refit that leaves the walls, the structure and the cladding alone often needs a good kitchen or bathroom designer and the right registered trades, not an architect. The test is what the work touches. If it changes nothing structural and nothing in the weathertight envelope, the restricted design rules above don’t reach it. Whether it needs a building consent is a separate question, and Sonder Architecture’s building consent checker for Auckland homes is a quick first pass before you ask the council.
When a licensed designer is non-negotiable
Take out a load-bearing wall, add an extension, raise a roof, or reclad: each one alters the primary structure or the external moisture-management system of the house. All four fall inside the RBW Order, so the design has to come from, or be supervised by, someone licensed for it. Removing a bearing wall usually brings in a structural engineer as well, to size the beam and its supports, and chartered professional engineers are treated as licensed designers in their own right.
This is where the renovation-versus-new-build split earns its keep. A designer used to new builds will draw a clean beam detail. One used to renovations will also ask what the existing foundations under each end of that beam are sitting on.
When a registered architect earns the fee
Some projects suit a registered architect: a tightly constrained site, a large or complex alteration, a character home where the design itself is the point, or a client who wants an architect’s design-led process from brief to completion. On those jobs you’re paying for design thinking as much as for drawings, and our guide to choosing a renovation architect covers how to compare them. On a straightforward alteration, an experienced architectural designer plus a builder who prices from the same drawings is often the more direct route.
Fees for both are quoted job by job, so there’s no honest single number to give you. Ask how the fee is worked out, which stages it covers (concept, developed design, consent drawings, observation during the build), and what happens to it if the design changes once the linings come off.
💡 Quick tip: Ask a designer how many alterations to existing houses they have taken through consent in the last year, and what council most often came back asking for. The answer tells you more about their renovation experience than their portfolio does.
How architectural renovations run at Superior Renovations
We’re a design-and-build company, not an architecture practice, so design is split into two jobs and both stay inside the group. Our in-house Design Department handles the interior and the aesthetic: layout, 3D renders, colours, materials and finishes. If a renovation needs council consent or structural drawings, that’s the work of Sonder Architecture‘s architectural designers. Plenty of projects use both teams, and you can read more about how our Design Department splits the work with Sonder.
The consent renovation process, step by step
This is how we run the extensions we design with Sonder and build ourselves, along with garage conversions and other consent-related work:
- We receive your enquiry, call you to understand what you’re after, and introduce you by email to Sonder’s head architectural designer, copied in on the same email.
- Sonder’s designer carries out a feasibility study, and you request the property file from Auckland Council so they can review it.
- Once the property file is in, the designer visits your home to talk through your options.
- If you want to go ahead, they prepare concept drawings and a quote for the architectural drawings needed for the building consent application to Auckland Council.
- If you accept that quote, the architectural designer produces the drawings.
- Our renovation consultant goes through the plans with you on site, talks through design ideas and measures the space, then prepares a proposal with a fixed quote, project specifications and designs.
- Once the plans are approved, your renovation begins.
Start with a free feasibility report
Not sure your idea is buildable? Our free feasibility report, done remotely by an architectural designer, is the cheaper first step. The page sets out the terms plainly: the assessment is remote with no site visit, you attach your property file to the questionnaire, it’s limited to one free report per customer and address, and it doesn’t guarantee full compliance without more detailed assessment. Once the form is in, the designer comes back to you with next steps within 5 working days.
Who is accountable once the build starts
Every renovation we run follows the same eight stages, with one dedicated project manager from start to finish, and our in-house Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP #BP156911) provides oversight on process, documentation, workmanship and compliance. You’ll know the price, the timeline and exactly what’s included before any work starts. Our page on the stages a Superior Renovations job runs through once the plans are signed off sets out who you deal with at each one.
💡 Quick tip: Ask whoever prices your renovation whether they’re pricing from consent drawings or from a concept. A price built on a concept moves when the engineer’s details arrive; one built on the drawings has fewer places for surprises to hide.
Renovating an architect-designed home
Some Auckland houses were designed by an architect in the first place: a mid-century house on the North Shore, a 1970s house stepped into a Titirangi bush section, a one-off home on a steep site. Renovating one is a different brief. The aim is usually to keep what the original designer got right while fixing what time, a growing family or the original budget got wrong.
Start with the original drawings
The property file may hold the original consent drawings. Those show the structural idea the house was built around: where the loads go, why the windows sit where they do, how the roof drains. A renovation that reads them first tends to work with the house instead of against it.
If the file holds nothing useful, a measured survey does the same job. On these houses it’s worth paying for one that records the details as well as the room sizes: roof pitches, eave depths, window head heights, the thickness of the exposed beams. Those are the numbers an alteration has to match if it’s going to look like it belongs.
Decide what’s worth keeping
Write down the three or four things you’d never change. The light in the living room, perhaps, or the line of the roof, or the way the house sits on the slope. Give that list to whoever designs the alteration. It turns a vague brief about respecting the original into decisions they can actually draw.
Pick a designer who will say no
The right renovation designer for one of these homes is the one who’ll tell you when an idea fights the building, whether they’re a registered architect or an architectural designer. Ask to see an alteration they’ve done to a house with a strong original design, and ask what they chose not to do.
💡 Quick tip: Before you commit to a design, ask for the existing and proposed plans side by side. If you can’t see at a glance what’s being kept, the design hasn’t decided yet.
Choosing who draws your renovation
Pick the designer for the house you have, not the house you wish you had. On an existing home the drawings that matter most are the ones at the joins, the beam ends and the corners of the old house nobody has looked at in fifty years. Check the licence, read the property file, and get the design and the price built from the same set of drawings.
➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations using the form at the end of this page, or call 0800 199 888.
➡ See how we design, consent and build whole-home renovations across Auckland
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project
Do I need an architect for a renovation in NZ?
No. New Zealand law does not require a registered architect for a house renovation. It requires that restricted design work, meaning the drawings for a house's primary structure or its cladding, roofing and waterproofing, is carried out or supervised by someone licensed for it. LBP designers hold the Design licence, and registered architects and chartered professional engineers are treated as licensed designers. A refit that touches neither the structure nor the envelope often needs no architect. Check consent questions with an LBP or Auckland Council.
What is the difference between renovation architects and new-build architects?
Both work from the same training and the same Building Code. A new-build designer works from a section and the district plan rules. A renovation designer also inherits a building: unreliable or missing plans, hidden structure, possible unconsented work, and the junctions where new work meets old framing, floors and cladding. Renovation drawings change more once the linings come off, so experience with existing houses shows in how the design allows for investigation and the engineer's input.
Can an architectural designer call themselves an architect?
No. Section 7 of the Registered Architects Act 2005 says anyone who designs buildings, prepares plans and specifications or supervises construction may use the title architect only if they are a registered architect, and a breach carries a fine of up to $10,000. Designers who are not registered can lawfully use titles such as architectural designer or building designer. The title says nothing either way about the quality of their work.
What design work counts as restricted building work?
Under clause 6 of the Building (Definition of Restricted Building Work) Order 2011, it is preparing drawings, specifications or other documents for building or altering the primary structure of a house or small-to-medium apartment building, or its external moisture-management system. Primary structure means the load-bearing parts, such as beams, bracing, foundations, the roof and walls. The moisture-management system includes cladding, roofing and waterproofing. An LBP or Auckland Council can confirm how it applies to your plans.
What are the LBP Design areas of practice?
The Design licence has three areas of practice, which replaced the old Design 1, 2 and 3 classes on 1 April 2010. Each relates to a building category in the 2010 Licensing Classes Order: category 1 is a single home with a total risk score of 12 or less on every elevation, category 3 is a building that is not a single home and is 10 metres or more high, and category 2 is everything else. An LBP may only take on work they are competent to do.
Who can design the removal of a load-bearing wall?
Removing a load-bearing wall alters the primary structure of a house, so its design is restricted building work. It has to be done or supervised by someone licensed for that design: an LBP designer, or a registered architect or chartered professional engineer, both of whom the law treats as licensed designers. A structural engineer usually sizes the beam and its supports. Confirm the consent requirements with an LBP or Auckland Council before any wall comes out.
How do I check whether my designer is licensed or registered?
Ask for their LBP number or their architect registration and check it on the public LBP register or the New Zealand Registered Architects Board register. Under section 289 of the Building Act 2004, a licensed building practitioner must produce evidence of their licence if you ask for it, and a registered architect holds a current certificate of registration. Treat a designer who will show you neither with caution.
What does an architectural renovation with Superior Renovations involve?
Our in-house Design Department handles layout, 3D renders, colours, materials and finishes. Where the renovation needs council consent or structural drawings, Sonder Architecture's architectural designers carry out the feasibility study, the site visit, the concept drawings and the consent drawings. Our renovation consultant then measures the space and prepares a proposal with a fixed quote, specifications and designs, and one dedicated project manager runs the build from start to finish.
What is in the free feasibility report?
It is a remote assessment by an architectural designer of whether your renovation is likely to need building or resource consent, the compliance issues it may run into, and recommended next steps. You attach your council property file to the questionnaire. It is limited to one free report per customer and address, involves no site visit, and does not guarantee full compliance without further detailed assessment. The designer comes back to you within 5 working days.
How much does a renovation architect cost?
There is no honest single figure. Registered architects and architectural designers quote each job on its scope, and fees vary with the size of the alteration, how many design stages you need and whether they observe the build. Ask for the fee basis and the stages it covers in writing, and ask what happens to the fee if the design has to change once the existing structure is opened up.
Should I use an architect to renovate an architect-designed home?
Not necessarily, but use someone who reads the original design before changing it. The council property file may hold the original consent drawings. Whoever designs the alteration, registered architect or architectural designer, should be able to explain what they are keeping and why, and show you an earlier alteration they have made to a house with a strong original design, including what they chose not to change.
Related guides
- How the consent process runs on an Auckland renovation
- What to check before you hire a renovation company
- The paperwork to get in writing before a renovation starts
Further Resources
- Featured projects and Client stories to see specifications on some of the projects.
- Real client stories from Auckland
Need more information?
Take advantage of our FREE Complete Home Renovation Guide (48 pages), whether you’re already renovating or in the process of deciding to renovate, it’s not an easy process, this guide will help you avoid costly mistakes.
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References
- Registered Architects Act 2005, section 7, legislation.govt.nz
- Fact sheet: Using the title architect, New Zealand Registered Architects Board
- Building Act 2004, sections 45, 84, 289 and 291, legislation.govt.nz
- Building (Definition of Restricted Building Work) Order 2011, clauses 3 and 6, legislation.govt.nz
- Building (Designation of Building Work Licensing Classes) Order 2010, clauses 4 to 6 and Schedule, legislation.govt.nz
- Licensing classes, Licensed Building Practitioners
