2025 Resene Student Design Awards winner

We sat down with Mila to talk about his winning project and how growing up and living in New Zealand has shaped his own identity.

Your winning project, Lalava’i Fonua, is intended to act as “a bridge between the ancestral past and unknown future” for the Tongan diaspora of New Zealand. How much of your own journey as a Tongan New Zealander informed your design?

My personal lived experience was the premise and drive for this project. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, ascending up from Tongan heritage, I have often felt some quiet disconnect between these two worlds. This disconnect is the common human condition of the diaspora population. Hence the project was not just an academic exercise, but a personal reckoning of sorts. The concept of fonua – which in Tongan means land, landscape, people, and womb simultaneously – gave me the language to understand that my detachment was not merely cultural, it was spatial and genealogical. This project was an active process of lashing and binding those same threads together.

In what ways is this project indicative of your approach to architecture?

Not specifically, however, I have always had a love for artistic creation. As a child, I built things and was surrounded by Tongan art forms. Being a child of the Moana, the beauty of the art forms – performance/ faiva, material/tufunga, and handicrafts/nimamea’a – was always present in our environment. During my later secondary school years, I was entrenched in workshop tech, graphics and art classes.

Architecture naturally presented itself as the professional calling that perfectly blended the creative and technical.

Following your graduation, you began working at McCoy Wixon, how has the ‘professional environment’ strengthened/changed your view of architecture?

At McCoy Wixon, my studio directors have been invaluable mentors, first during my academic internship, and now more than ever as I return to the Dunedin studio as a graduate. What has developed further is my appreciation for the full arc of a project, from the earliest design proposal, through documentation, and construction. It also deepens your respect for the craft; I am eagerly carrying the convictions developed in my thesis about culture, identity, and the responsibility of architecture into the professional reality.

In what way(s) has winning the 2025 Resene Student Design Awards impacted you personally and in your career?

Personally, representing Tonga through such a prestigious architectural competition in Aotearoa New Zealand feels significant far beyond just the self. It is some small proof of concept that our intrinsic stories, knowledge systems, traditions, and worldview do have a valued place in this profession. I carry that with humility.

Professionally, I am grateful to have the recognition of my peers and superiors. The competition was intensive and demanding. This bound those of us involved into quite a tight-knit crew. My fellow competitors are now friends and colleagues, who I’m glad to stand beside as we look toward the future of architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

blackwhite magazine

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