3. Combined Traditions The earliest buildings in New Zealand were the humble huts of the first Polynesians. By the time of European contact, the Maori had evolved a particular building type, the meeting house, which is the only building unique to New Zealand. In form it was a simple, gable-ended structure with an open porch at one end, but it was a building integrated into its setting, the marae-atea, and a building which is, in a real sense, the ancestor after whom most are named. By the mid nineteenth century the meeting houses were generally highly carved. These wharenui, or meeting houses, play a role in community life unlike the role played by any European-derived buildings, even churches. Some of the most exciting and original buildings in New Zealand (the Futuna Chapel in Wellington and the Arthur's Pass Chapel for example) marry the form and spirit of the Maori meeting house with traditions drawn from European architecture.

4. Combined Traditions New Zealand's first European architects began to practice in the early Victorian period. Though 12,000 miles from the sources of the styles they used for their buildings, through books and magazines and by way of travel, New Zealand architects maintained their membership of a broader British architectural community. Rather than being seen as copying finer British buildings and "failing" because they did not develop quickly a distinctive New Zealand styles, New Zealand's architects of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century are better seen as working within an architectural tradition that spanned the world and as producing notable buildings within that tradition.