You can barely throw a wineglass in Wellington without hitting a café, restaurant or retail space designed by Allistar Cox. Go a bit further afield – Auckland, Melbourne, Tokyo, Dubai – and you’ll find his designs there too. And whether its Courtenay Place’s Ancestral restaurant, Ponsonby’s Golden Dawn or the interiors of coffee giant Mojo’s nationwide cafés, all bear the distinctive sleek and understated Cox style.
Yet the fastest talker in Wellington almost missed his architectural calling. Born in Lower Hutt, Cox twice applied to attend architecture school and twice failed. In the end, he did a four-year design course at Victoria University of Wellington and opened his own eponymous design practice at the height of the 1990s’ recession.