The Occasion
AUT Live is the University’s annual open day, held on a Saturday at the City Campus, when prospective students, their families and their schools come to judge for themselves what a degree at Auckland University of Technology offers. For a school, the day is a public examination of its offer. Every programme, laboratory and member of staff on show is assessed against the alternatives a seventeen year old is weighing, and the impression formed in a single afternoon carries into enrolment decisions months later.
The 2026 edition took place on Saturday 29 August, in poor weather. The turnout was nonetheless strong, and the School of Future Environments was one of the busiest parts of the campus: its sessions were full, several rooms went beyond capacity, and staff, current students and alumni spent the day in conversation with prospective students and their whānau.
Professor Ghaffarian’s Leadership of the Day
Professor Ghaffarian led the School’s participation in AUT Live 2026. Planning and delivering the University’s open days is a formal part of the Head of School portfolio, alongside programme development, staffing and quality assurance, and in 2026 it fell to a School whose portfolio now centres on architecture, engineering and construction. The task was larger than staging an information session. The School had to present a coherent account of itself across those disciplines, to an audience meeting most of them for the first time.
Prof Ghaffarian’s answer was to present the School as a set of disciplines that must work together if cities and communities are to be built well, rather than as a list of separate degrees. Prospective students met the full undergraduate and postgraduate portfolio in that frame: Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Architectural Design Management, Civil and Construction Engineering, Construction Management, Quantity Surveying and Engineering Project Management. The emphasis fell on the forces now reshaping the built environment professions, from climate responsibility and digital innovation to complex infrastructure and interdisciplinary leadership, and on the claim that the School prepares graduates to take part in that change from the day they enrol.
The staffing of the day reflected the same judgement. Academic staff, current students and alumni were placed together in front of visitors, so that a prospective student could hear about a programme from the person who teaches it, the student who is taking it and the graduate who now practises it. Full rooms and sessions running past capacity were the visible result.
A Portfolio Built for Scrutiny
Prof Ghaffarian stands behind an open day portfolio he helped to build, having developed several of the programmes on show. He directed the Architectural Engineering major through its first Engineering New Zealand accreditation and led its accreditation working group in 2018, and he later led the department’s accreditation working group in 2021. Engineering New Zealand lists the Architectural Engineering and Construction Engineering majors at AUT as accredited from 2018, recognised internationally under the Washington Accord, with the next review in 2028.
The professional standing extends across the School. The Bachelor of Construction is accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and by the New Zealand Institute of Quantity Surveyors, and as Head of School Prof Ghaffarian is responsible for accreditation reporting to the New Zealand Registered Architects Board. When a parent asks whether a degree leads to professional registration, the School can answer with the names of the bodies that have examined it. That is the strongest argument an open day can make, and it rests on two decades of programme design and accreditation work that began with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency before he joined AUT.
Standing That Prospective Students Can Verify
AUT Live 2026 was also the first open day at which the School could point to an international subject ranking. Under Prof Ghaffarian’s strategy, Architecture and Built Environment at AUT entered the QS World University Rankings by Subject for the first time in 2026, in the 201 to 260 band, within two years. The result belongs to the School, and it matters on a day like AUT Live because it gives families an external measure of quality at the moment they are comparing institutions. The ranking is set out in full in the entry on the first QS subject ranking.
The day drew on the School’s industry relationships in the same way. Partnerships such as The Future of Home challenge with Signature Homes and the industry programme of the GDI conference give prospective students concrete evidence that teaching is connected to the firms and institutions that will employ them. Prof Ghaffarian has made that connection a deliberate feature of the School’s offer: learning that is rigorous, linked to industry and grounded in the practical problems graduates will meet.
Institutional Consequence
Student recruitment is where a school’s reputation is tested most directly, and where the work of programme design, accreditation, research standing and industry partnership is tested against the choices of the people it is meant to serve. An open day cannot be judged on the day alone; its effect appears in applications and enrolments. What can be judged on the day is demand for the School’s sessions, and in 2026 that demand exceeded the rooms available.
For Prof Ghaffarian, in his first year as Head of School, AUT Live was an early public test of the account of the built environment professions he has set for it. The School presented itself as a single, future focused community of disciplines, and prospective students responded in numbers. The invitation he extended afterwards, to anyone considering study who could not attend, reflects the same intent: the School’s door stays open beyond the day itself.