About Aroha
A group built around questions.
Aroha was not created as a conventional architecture studio. It developed through a much wider body of work across hospitality, travel, events, development, wellness, culture and design. That background shaped a different understanding of what development requires. Architecture is essential. But so is knowing what people want to experience. How luxury is changing. Why people travel. How businesses operate. What makes an idea commercially relevant. How culture gives a place identity. And increasingly, how the environments around us affect human health and performance. Aroha brings those questions into one practice.
Our Story
From experience to environment.
The foundations of Aroha were built over more than two decades of work across luxury hospitality, international travel, events, concierge, destination development, brand building and cultural experience. That work involved understanding people at an unusually personal level: what they value, how they travel, what they remember, what creates a sense of belonging and what separates genuine experience from manufactured luxury. Over time, that enquiry moved increasingly toward the physical environments in which those experiences occur.
This led to extensive research into wellness, neuroscience, circadian rhythm, environmental psychology, materiality, sound, landscape and different traditions of spatial design. Those ideas were initially brought together through the SUNOOM philosophy.
Aroha represents the evolution of that thinking into a wider strategic and development practice. Today we work from the earliest question of what a place should become through to the architecture, experiences, wellbeing strategy, partnerships, programming and commercial life required to make that idea real.
Veronica
Kohlbecker
Founder & Chief Visionary Officer
Veronica Kohlbecker is an entrepreneur, creative strategist and destination developer whose career has moved across luxury travel, hospitality, international events, concierge, media, wellness and real estate development.
Her work has consistently centred on one question: what makes an experience genuinely meaningful to the person having it?
Early experience in global events and luxury lifestyle led to the creation of high-level concierge and travel businesses serving internationally mobile private clients. Travel subsequently became an important part of Veronica's work through What A Wonderful World and her wider editorial and destination development activity, giving her direct exposure to hospitality, culture and emerging forms of travel across many regions of the world. Her work increasingly moved from experiencing destinations to helping shape them.
Aroha grew from that convergence of hospitality, business development, human-centred design and Veronica's long-running study of the relationship between environment and wellbeing. She has developed a particular interest in circadian design, neuroscience, natural materials, sound, biophilic environments, human performance, astronomy and the relationship between traditional spatial knowledge and contemporary science. Veronica's role within Aroha is not that of a conventional architect. She works at the strategic and conceptual level: identifying the opportunity, defining the vision, developing the experience and assembling specialist teams capable of translating the idea into a functioning project. This allows Aroha to operate between disciplines rather than from within only one.
Andrea
Maslovar
Andrea Maslovar brings a background in real estate, hospitality and project development to the Aroha ecosystem. Her work focuses particularly on translating concept into operation: connecting creative thinking with development requirements, partners, implementation and the practical realities of hospitality. Together, Veronica and Andrea have developed a model in which vision and delivery are considered from the beginning rather than sequentially.
Our Collective
The best idea rarely comes
from one discipline.
Aroha operates as a collective.
Our wider network can include:
- architects
- masterplanners
- engineers
- interior designers
- landscape architects
- neuroscientists
- medical specialists
- wellness practitioners
- lighting experts
- acoustic specialists
- artists
- artisans
- chefs
- nutrition specialists
- hospitality operators
- technology companies
- brand strategists
- cultural advisors
- storytellers
- researchers
- fabricators
- modular manufacturers
- event producers
The exact team changes according to the project.
Aroha acts as the connective layer.
Architecture &
Technical Network
For larger architectural and technically complex projects, Aroha works with specialist architectural, planning, engineering and technology partners. This allows the practice to combine the agility of an ideas-led studio with access to the resources required for complex, multidisciplinary developments. The role of Aroha is to protect the integrity of the original concept while ensuring that creative, human, commercial and technical priorities remain connected through the development process.
Aaroha
An experiential hospitality
brand by Aroha.
AROHA is the more intimate and experiential expression of the wider Aroha philosophy. It creates smaller-scale destinations, camps, hideaways, modular hospitality, signature wellbeing spaces, retreats, studios, culinary concepts, artisan collaborations and experiences connected to nature, art, movement and the sky.
Where Aroha works predominantly as a strategic design and development partner for clients, AROHA is a world created by Aroha itself.
Discover Aroha