Architect profile
NINA MARITZ
on our heads. My friend went on to study
drama, and I – architecture. (A second
career choice was landscape architecture,
aspects of which I now incorporate in my
work).
How did you end up in Namibia and
what made you decide to establish your
practice there?
My father is 4th generation Namibian and
we visited my grandparents here in school
holidays. In 1985, my parents decided
to move back to Namibia and I came
with the luggage, as a result of getting a
Namibian Government bursary to study
from my second year onward. This was a
few years before Independence, and after
Independence in 1990, at the end of 1992,
I returned to fulfill my bursary obligations
by working for Government. I wasn’t suited
to the civil service environment, however,
and left to work for a private firm after 10
months, paying back the bursary instead.
As I am not the cocktail-circuit kind of
person, I found that the more informal and
open nature of Namibian society suited me
better. Here you are not judged so much