Immigrant to industry leader

Architect Zolna Murray fled war-torn Yugoslavia with a 2-year-old daughter and iron-clad determination to make a new life in New Zealand. Debbie Jamieson reports.

Zolna Murray was 52 when she got dreadlocks. ‘‘Everybody tried to talk me out of it,’’ she recalls. At the time, the accomplished architect was working in the United Arab Emirates, and decided that if former Green MP Na´ ndor Ta´ nczos could attend Parliament with dreads, she could present herself at board meetings and to members of the UAE military.

‘‘My youngest daughter said it was culturally inappropriate. But then I said ‘well, Hungarian sheepdogs have huge dreads’ and even if you think I’m crazy I don’t care.’’

Challenging conventional thinking and seeking innovation are intrinsic to the 64-year-old Yugoslavian-born Hungarian.

‘‘I struggled all my life because I was a bit of a square peg in a round hole. Not just here but everywhere.’’

Following a middle-class upbringing in Yugoslavia, Murray won a scholarship to study architecture in Budapest during the late 1980s as the revolutionary wave that overthrew communist rule in much of Eastern Europe in 1989 was sweeping across the continent.

She returned to ethnically-divided Yugoslavia to work as the country was starting to break up. In 1991 it closed in on her life as 260 Croatian prisoners of war and civilians were killed by Serb paramilitaries in the Vukovar massacre.

For the first time time the tensions started to affect the lives of Hungarians living in Serbian-controlled areas.

‘‘They pulled in all the Hungarian boys and men as reserve army but most of my generation said ‘no, this is not our war. We don’t want to take part’,’’ she said.

Newly married and with a young child, Murray decided to leave, and a timely change in New Zealand’s immigration laws enabled her to immigrate without seeking refugee status. Then her husband decided not to come.

‘‘He chickened out,’’ the straight-talking Murray shrugs.

With typical stoic determination 27-year-old Murray and 2-year-old Barbara headed to New Zealand and Whanganui, where she had been given a contact.

She says she earned $2 an hour at that first job. ‘‘But it was good because they helped me learn the local stuff.’’

‘‘It was very difficult but I wasn’t prepared to accept that it was,’’ she says.

Limited job opportunities, a struggling local economy and the difficulties of learning English and New Zealand’s Building Code soon drove her to Wellington where the pair lived off a small benefit and meals of two-minute noodles, eggs and cheese.

She was working on contract with no sick pay and having to pay creche fees over holiday periods when she couldn’t work. And in the male-dominated building industry she struggled against an expectation of 24-hour availability.

‘‘The other part is networking – pubbing and the sport thing. It’s just not me and I was just never going to do it. I know it’s been detrimental for my career but if you want to be successful in this industry you have to do it.’’

Within the next couple of years she began full-time work, met now-husband Graham and became a registered architect.

Learning about building in New Zealand wasn’t easy. In particular she found the lack of insulation, single glazing and obsession with windows was in contrast to sustainable models in Europe.

‘‘Here you have the views and people are just more used to putting another jumper on or wearing slippers. You don’t have to have 20 degrees in the house all the time.

‘‘It was a big shock. I was trying to fit in that and be comfortable with it but to some extent I still struggle.’’

After 10 years of working in Wellington, Murray was ready to stretch her architectural reach.

At university she had developed a keen interest in 3D modelling and, surprised to find it was rarely utilised in New Zealand, continued to develop her understanding and invested in the technology to transition from paper-based construction to digital.

‘‘There are intelligent models that can produce all those drawings, make the documentation better, more co-ordinated, less problems, all sorts of things,’’ Murray says.

‘‘You can change things easier but it also flows into being more economical and more effective.’’

Full of enthusiasm Murray, Graham, and three daughters moved to Auckland where she worked for some high-profile architectural firms that were keen to move into the digital space. But she says companies lacked the resources or willpower to make the transition.

In 2004 Murray and Graham (who retired from his job as a secondary school teacher) set up their own company – Predefine – with a vision of bringing the technology to the industry.

‘‘I believed at the time that this was the future. The industry was in such bad shape but this system would have improved productivity majorly and increased transparency.’’