Deryn Barton calls meeting Richard Naish “one of those good-luck things”. The feeling is mutual. Rich met her soon after he founded the practice at a time when she and husband John took a leap of faith – make that a couple of leaps – gave up farming sheep in the King Country, relocated to Te Kuiti township and started a forestry investment company called Greenplan. Their humble office was located just alongside the main highway and, when they decided to put a café on the same block of roadside land, they looked around for someone to help with the design. As is the case in Aotearoa, it was a one-step-removed affair: “Rich was just starting out and we knew the parents of a friend of his,” explains Deryn.

The RTA Studio design for Bosco Café was a built champion of the qualities of plantation-grown pine and a suitable companion vehicle for the Bartons’ forestry enterprise, with a socially responsible heart.

The venue, a humble but welcoming spot, became legend with locals, and with skiers and travellers passing though the guts of the North Island. Its all-timber structure and monopitch roof provided much-appreciated respite in the café-light region.