Volker Hawighorst

A trained cabinet maker with a keen eye for craftsmanship, Volker worked for several decades as an architect across international environments before relocating from Germany to New Zealand. Now based in New Plymouth, his practice is rooted in transformation — finding beauty and formal structure in materials others overlook.
His work spans recycled plastic bread tags, kina shells and their spines, and found bones, combining many small units into larger entities where the ordinary reveals unexpected connections to geology, mathematics, and ecology. Whether synthetic or natural, each material carries its own history — passed through Kiwi kitchens, gathered from coastlines, returned from the earth — and Volker weaves these histories into compositions that reward both distance and close inspection.
His deeply held belief that nothing truly disappears from this Earth drives his practice, and his awards — including the Waiheke Small Sculpture Prize (2021) and the Art in the Park Sustainability Award (2022) — reflect a growing recognition of his contribution to sustainable art in Aotearoa.