WildLab

WildLab is a group of designers and researchers committed to growing a world where people and nature thrive together.

We collaborate with community groups, iwi, farmers, business, and government agencies. Together, we create regenerative landscapes, strategies, experiences, and communication tools that connect them and their partners with te taiao and nature.

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Te Araroa Map Series and Toolkit

Be among the first to explore Te Araroa in a whole new way. This new six-map series brings the whole trail together, beautifully designed for walkers, section-planners, and everyone who’s part of the Te Araroa journey.

$58.00

Love Our Huts T-Shirt Fundraiser

Wear your support for FMC's Love Our Huts campaign with these awesome T-shirts! $20 from each purchase goes to supporting the great work Federated Mountain Clubs do.

$48.00

Southern Faces - An Introduction to Rock Climbing in Ōtepoti Dunedin

Southern Faces is a comprehensive climbing guidebook for Ōtepoti Dunedin, created to fill a 25-year gap in local climbing information. Designed and edited by WildLab's very own Riley Smith, the project brought together climbers, designers, mana whenua and scientists to produce an accurate and visually engaging resource. It combines detailed route descriptions, maps and access notes with essays and photography that highlight the region’s geology, ecology and climbing culture.

$48.00

Southern Faces Tees - Pinnacle

Tees feature Dave Brash’s original topos from his 2000 classic Dunedin Rock - cheers Dave! These shirts are a tribute to the cliffs, climbs and community that continue to shape the climbing story of Ōtepoti. There are three awesome designs to choose from!

$48.00

Our Projects

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Ararira Wetland Community Restoration Project

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A restoration design reimagines a degraded wetland into an inspiring outdoor classroom where planting events connect people with place. The landscape's patterns evoke inanga, tuna, and a lazy river, nurturing both ecological renewal and a community of learners and stewards in a shared space.

Lowburn Ferry Vineyard Master Plan

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This initial design layers ecological restoration with native planting and productive gardens to highlight terroir. Designed as an animated narrative, it invites people to experience the vineyard’s unique climate and story through immersive landscapes that celebrate place and provenance.

Seaview Vineyard White Road Tour Storytelling

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Storytelling panels and wayfinding signs guide vineyard visitors along Yealand's White Road Tour, explaining sustainable winemaking practices—like caring for water, nurturing vines naturally, and repurposing prunings—with engaging visuals and clear directions, turning each stop into an immersive, educational journey through the vineyard’s regenerative processes.

Seaview Vineyard Landscape Restoration Strategy

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WildLab and Yealands Wine Group devised a landscape strategy across 250 ha, planting native vegetation to boost biodiversity, restore coastal, riparian, and hillside ecosystems, support seed dispersal, enhance amenity value, and strengthen brand storytelling through ecologically rich design.

Field Notes

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Behind the Image

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This column, some years back for Wilderness Magazine, takes a look at our love of pristine wilderness photos—those calendar shots with no people, no huts, no mess. But behind every image is someone swatting sandflies, hauling gear, and eating tuna from a foil pouch. Maybe it’s time we showed that too

New Zealand’s ‘Arc of Influence’: The ‘Clean, Blue, Green’ Country

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New Zealand is often imagined as a handful of islands in the Pacific—but its territory is now mostly ocean. This study explores how mapping can reshape our sense of national identity, proposing a shift from “clean green” to a more expansive “clean, blue, green” vision grounded in conservation and connection.

Social Natures

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How do landscapes and people shape each other? From stone walls built after forests were cleared, to regenerating bush reclaiming old farmland, it reveals how places are formed through work, memory, and material. Rather than viewing nature and architecture as separate, it shows them as deeply entwined—built from shared histories, changing relationships, and ongoing conversations.

New Land

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This exploratory map invites us to see Aotearoa’s public conservation lands—covering a third of the country—not as fixed or finished, but as places full of fresh potential. Re-imagined as a newly discovered archipelago, it prompts us to ask how we might live differently within these lands. Could they foster new forms of innovation, economy, and culture grounded in restoration, care, and a deep engagement with nature?

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Our Projects

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