Tony Watkins

Who is Tony Watkins?

Leonard Anthony Watkins BArch, MArch Auck, DipTP, FNZIA, RIBA, known as Tony Watkins, is a New Zealand architect, educator, planner, urban designer, author and international peace activist. In his role as educator and through various organisations he helped form local and global policy on sustainable development and architecture. He is one of the founders of International Architects Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility, initiator of Agenda 21, and the Peaceful Cities concept at the UN Habitat II Conference in Istanbul in 1996. As co-director of the International Union of Architects Sustainability Work Programme, representing more than 27 million architects globally, he advocated vernacular architecture as sustaining the life of the planet without harming stories, traditions, culture and place. Watkins credits a trip he made from London to Japan by bicycle and on foot as the experience which opened his eyes to the concept of vernacular architecture, a subject he taught for many years at the University of Auckland.