Johannes La Grouw

Johannes La Grouw was a Dutch immigrant who gave New Zealand one of its most recognisable house designs. The Lockwood home, with its warm solid-timber walls slotted together without a nail in sight, came out of an engineering idea he brought with him and built into a company that is still going seventy years later.

A Dutch Idea in New Zealand Timber

La Grouw emigrated from the Netherlands, arriving in 1951, and built his company in Rotorua, in the middle of the North Island’s timber country. Trained as an engineer, he was struck by how much of New Zealand’s abundant radiata pine could be turned into houses, and he set about designing a building system that used solid timber as both structure and finish.

Building Lockwood

In 1951 he co-founded Lockwood and patented the interlocking system that gave the company its name: profiled timber sections that lock together with an aluminium spline, so the walls go up like a kit and need no internal lining. The look, all exposed golden pine, became instantly identifiable, and Lockwood homes spread across the country and were exported as far as Japan.

The Legacy

The Lockwood system outlived its inventor and stayed in the family, run down the generations as one of New Zealand’s enduring building brands. Its resilience became part of the story too, with Lockwood houses noted for standing up well to earthquakes. Few immigrant founders have left a mark as literally built into the landscape.

Johannes La Grouw features in our guide to the most famous New Zealand entrepreneurs.