Graeme Burgess was born and raised in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and apart from a stint in Sydney in the early 1980s, has lived there all his life. He studied architecture at Auckland University which opened his mind to the creative world. He is a partner in Burgess Treep and Knight Architects, established with Lucy Treep in 1990. Graeme believes that the built environment should be a place that nurtures and supports society at all levels, as well as being an intertwined cultural space filled with stories. He feels those are the qualities that make architecture important and that keep him engaged in thinking about how architecture works in our world.