Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Home New Zealand

For the past few years, my material aspirations for a getaway haven’t extended much beyond more camping gear. Specifically: for a couple of years we lusted after a new tent. One of those new ones with multiple rooms and mosquito nets on the windows, a central area to set up a kitchen and an area out the front for sitting in at night. We’d prowl the campground with the toddlers, eyeing up other people’s tents, then Googling to find the price. Then came last summer. Remember that really big storm? The one that combined with a king tide and flooded campgrounds and bridges around the country? “First storm of the year may hit New Zealand in days” announced The New Zealand Herald. NIWA tweeted the potential for an ‘atmospheric river of moisture’.…

You might have noticed there’s something of a building boom on: now more than ever, it’s important to celebrate the really good ones. Each year, the New Zealand Institute of Architects conducts a rigorous judging programme, led by a group of esteemed local and international architects. We were delighted to see a few recent favourites announced at the awards in late November – including the ‘Kawakawa’ house by Lance and Nicola Herbst, which was our Home of the Year earlier this year and took out the Sir Ian Athfield Award for Housing. Built on a difficult site in a pōhutukawa grove at Piha, the house reaches for light and sun, sitting lightly up on steel poles around a central courtyard. Also winning housing awards was the ‘Rawene’ house in Westmere…

In August 2018, before the oak trees in Whitaker Place burst into leafy lushness, photographer Sam Hartnett spent a number of days on campus at the University of Auckland photographing the Fine Arts, Architecture & Planning and Music & Dance Libraries. These spaces are on the verge of disappearance, and will soon be consolidated by the university into the main library. While Hartnett has previously documented the School of Architecture & Planning Library and the Music School by Manning Mitchell (an NZIA Enduring Architecture award winner) his carefully pruned group of 12 photographs from the exhibition Ex Libris comprises, with almost no exception, close-up views of interiors. His selection is modest, shady, textural and eschews the heroic architectural image. The three libraries are architecturally diverse. They range from the modern…

Throw a stone from the deck of this holiday house designed by Aaron Paterson and Liz Tjahjana of PAC Studio, and you’ll hit a landmark. Daly’s Wharf, Akaroa’s oldest surviving wharf, projects from the nearby seawall into Children’s Bay, terminating in a little shelter with an orange turret roof. Paterson and Tjahjana – who designed the house in association with Dom Glamuzina of Glamuzina Architects – spent many hours on this wharf during the early design phase, contemplating how they could arrange a large, two-storey house across the adjacent building site in a way that preserved privacy, maximised views and respected the heritage neighbourhood. All while pushing a few boundaries. There were a couple of other balls in the air. “We needed to break down the mass and form of the…

You’ve been quietly playful with colours for the exterior battens? A colour palette that we had to adhere to came with the subdivision. It’s quite muted and soft, no bright colours, but I wanted to give it the richness that some of our other beach houses have. So we painted the sides of some of the battens different colours. When you look at the house front on, the colours are muted. But on an angle, you get colour. It picks up on the grass thing – if you look at a blade of grass, green or dried, there will be myriad colours. Are there extra costs involved in building on such coastal sites? You’ve got to have water tanks and effluent disposal fields – about $30-40,000 before you build, whether…

Otama is one of the most perfect beaches on the Coromandel Peninsula. There’s squeaky white sand and gentle rolling surf, an estuary and bleached grassy hills behind. It’s three hours from the nearest city over narrow, winding roads and, until recently, the road from State Highway 25 was unsealed and occasionally treacherous. Sometimes, in the middle of summer storms, the one-lane bridge floods. Architect Ken Crosson knows the area intimately. His own bach – the winner of both our Home of the Year in 2003, and Home of the Decade in 2006 – sits on a hill at one end, with a commanding view over the Mercury Islands. So when he was approached by the owners of this site to build a house in the dunes, tucked into a nook…

Project Wet-area bathroom Architect Tim Dorrington, Dorrington Atcheson Architects Location Avondale, Auckland Brief The bathroom for a new, cost-effective two-bedroom home for a couple. It’s quite a glamorous bathroom for a reasonably pared-back house. Tell us about the approach. TIM DORRINGTON We were interested in making the space quite rich and special as it’s the only wet area in the home. We love the strandboard ceiling – where did the inspiration come from? To a certain extent, it ties into the ideas of modernism: using an industrial material as a finished product, which tied into the ethos for the home as a whole. We also love the texture it gives, its economy and how it works with other materials and colours in the space. How have you dealt with storage?…

DECEMBER • Dec/Jan issue on sale • Home of the Year entries close FEBRUARY • Feb/March issue on sale • Home of the Year judging • In Conversation with Home of the Year judge Gloria Cabral, in Auckland MARCH • Home of the Year finalists announced APRIL • April/May issue on sale • Home of the Year announced in Auckland JUNE • June/July issue on sale • Design Awards call to entry OCTOBER • Oct/Nov issue on sale • Design Awards winner and finalists announced NOVEMBER • HOME Tour, coming to a centre near you homemagazine.co.nz Cover image and image p154: Home of the Year international judge Gloria Cabral, photographed in Switzerland while participating in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Images ©Rolex/Marc Latzel.…

In recent years, the size and scale of what we build at the beach might have changed – designs are bigger and more complex – but the spirit of earlier, more humble buildings remains. There’s a casualness to houses by the beach – a need to engage with the elements, the sun and sea. Homes on the coast have always featured prominently in Home of the Year and in recent years we’ve celebrated these with the ‘Best Retreat’ award, which recognises the particular challenges and joys of building at the beach. Altherm has particular expertise in this area, and is well known for producing windows and doors that take advantage of spectacular views, while providing superior thermal performance and durability in the rigours of a coastal climate. The brand’s suite…

Simon Devitt The photographer travelled to Wanaka, the Coromandel and Mahurangi to cover a host of getaways for us. You’ve shot a few retreats for this issue – what makes a good one? We’re spoilt in New Zealand to have so many incredible and varied landscapes. Added to that, we all have our own unique flavour of what our retreat should look like and how it needs to perform. So, it’s a very personal view on what makes a good one. I think the site or location lead the manner in which the designs are imagined and ultimately conceived. I really enjoy distance and isolation, modesty and a kind of earned comfort. Simplicity. Any plans for a getaway of your own? All of my energy is currently absorbed by my…

UnserHaus comes from ‘our house’ in German: it opened on Auckland’s Parnell Rise recently and features 720 square metres of space, bringing together a complete range of high-quality German appliance brands. The space takes the ground floor of a converted warehouse, all raw concrete and steel, softened with natural timber and stone. It’s the realisation of a long-held dream by BSH Home Appliances New Zealand – Bosch, Gaggenau and NEFF – which worked with local makers and designers to create a space to inspire and delight consumers. The result is an environment that celebrates the spirit of hospitality and love of food imbued in each brand. Beautifully designed working kitchens show how products might sit in real homes, along with the versatility of the various ranges on offer. The Gaggenau…

Better known for making beautiful bespoke metal work, metal workers Powersurge have now released a small collection of ready-made pieces of their own. “The collection is the result of years of percolation and refinement,” says designer Andrea Harradine. Tell us about the collection? Its creation was a very organic process. Over the years we’ve worked on interiors that have required us to build smaller pieces to finish a room, when nothing quite right could be sourced. It wasn’t until a visit to Europe last year, in particular Nulifar Depot in Milan, that the penny actually dropped – here was this incredible, inspiring array of items for the home. The craftsmanship on display was wonderful, and the respect for detailing, which is part of the culture, was evident. It made us see the…

Project ‘Takatu’ house Architect RTA Studio Location Tawharanui Peninsula Brief Build a bach for family and friends, one that will be passed down through the generations. The view from this long, low red bach isn’t of white sand and pōhutukawa, but paddocks and sheep. It’s a bucolic, sheltered little spot, close enough to the beach yet far enough away that it doesn’t get gusts of afternoon wind. There’s a long, shared driveway and a handful of baches; the owners all know each other well. The owners bought the property seven years ago – a tired weatherboard cottage painted ‘Pioneer Red’. It had tiny bedrooms off the living area, and faced the wrong way on the south-facing site. They were fond of it, but after five years, it was time to…

“I always wanted to build a cabin,” says Simon Wilson. “That’s one thing I’d wanted to do forever.” Yet three years ago, at the height of the Auckland property crisis, Wilson and his partner Anna MacLeod – who have two children, Milo (eight) and Scout (two) – found themselves locked out of the Auckland market. “I felt frustrated that we didn’t own anything,” he says. “We couldn’t play, we couldn’t renovate, we couldn’t build anything.” The two cabins sit side by side on a deck. One is for sleeping, the other is a living space with a daybed that can be used for sleeping if needed. The cabins are solid ply boxes overlaid with macrocarpa rainscreens that will slowly silver with age. You might know Wilson’s work – the Auckland-based photographer…

What were the site’s complexities? AARON PATERSON With its waterfront location and visual prominence from Daly’s Wharf, it needed to be aware of the surroundings. From a distance and the waterfront, the design intent is that the house appears as a series of ad-hoc gabled buildings, each with a slightly different character. What do you enjoy most about the home? LIZ TJAHJANA I enjoyed crafting striking details, like the north-facing 45-degree chisel window that draws light into the double-height volume and the retractable cedar screen on a rack-and-pinion system, which is operated from inside of the bedroom. Working with the wonderful builders at Avenue Homes to realise these details was fabulous. AP I enjoy the weight of the elevations. A hazard for a site blessed with picturesque views is that the…

Designed on the footprint of memories, this Opahi Bay home has history in its DNA. The familiar is its framework; generational continuity its building blocks. Just after World War II, Ray McGreal bought this sloping site overlooking a quiet curve of coast in Mahurangi, north of Auckland, where colourful upturned dinghies waited for a favourable tide. Some years later, in 1953, he entrusted his neighbour to oversee the build of a holiday retreat. The plans featured a simple fibrolite bach on the highest part of the land – and a rather more indulgent tennis court below. Trouble was, the neighbour had different ideas. He instructed the contractor to transpose the two so that, forever more, the game-set-match play has taken place with the ultimate umpire’s view to Mahurangi East. When Pat de Pont…

How did you create a structure that talked about the New Zealand context? We typically research local context extensively and draw threads to generate an architectural response, which is woven with the clients desires and brief. Our touchstones became a combination of elevated walkways and buildings, with timber and metal forms seen in the process of gold-mining in the area. How does the home work in the landscape? The house presents a lightweight connection to the site. While it’s elevated on steel piloti, it’s actually quite recessive in the landscape as viewed from the beach – the finishes are muted and blend comfortably into the bush. This is becoming even more so as the new planting matures, thanks to fantastic landscaping design from Bridget Gilbert. What made you put the…

Project Alpine retreat Designer Dean Sharpe Location Arrowtown Brief The owner-designer created a brooding, intimate space in a holiday house designed by Fearon Hay. The design was a collaboration between you and Fearon Hay? DEAN SHARPE I took over the interior fit out, including designing all the millwork and cabinetry. You changed the original design to subtly separate the kitchen from the living area. Why? We wanted to make the kitchen its own space, yet connected to the social zones. The floating appliance wall acts as the divider from the living room. We like to entertain, and keeping the kitchen out of view while eating makes you relax. It also gave us another two walls for artwork. It’s crisp and minimal, but not cold – how did you achieve that? The cabinetry…

Project New ensuite Architect Andrew Meiring Location Devonport, Auckland Brief To sensitively and effectively resolve heritage issues and an underutilised area to create a new bathroom. What was this space before? ANDREW MEIRING It was previously a combination of two spaces – a huge double-sided fireplace and an externally accessed turret folly. It was decided that the turret was to be re-purposed and the fireplaces removed as they were a safety hazard in the middle of the sleeping zone. Removing the fireplaces while strengthening and retaining the external chimney, a heritage requirement, involved an awful amount of structural gymnastics. The space freed up by the fireplace removal became the en suite and the turret became the bath area. Connecting the two makes for a particularly dynamic space. How did you…

We’d love you to join us for an evening with Gloria Cabral, one of South America’s leading architects. Our international judge on Home of the Year 2019, Cabral will talk about regional architecture and the work of her firm Gabinete de Arquitectura. We’ll have a bite to eat and a glass of wine, and there’ll be plenty of opportunity to ask the architect questions. AUCKLAND Thursday 21 February, 6.30pm Objectspace, 13 Rose Road, Ponsonby, Auckland THE DETAILS Cabral was recently awarded the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture at the Women in Architecture Awards; in 2016 she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. From her studio in Asunción, Paraguay, she designs buildings that are both rough and polished. They are always built from brick – she…

My partner and I have decided to get married. Until recently this has been one of life’s rituals that had passed us by. However, the time suddenly seemed right and the question was asked appropriately – albeit casually – on the street outside Auckland Art Gallery. With this, a whole lot of things we’d never really contemplated came into play – most pressingly, where would this event take place? Hawke’s Bay, where we live a lot of the time, is overflowing with glamorous wedding venues, all requiring significant notice to secure a booking. After exploring a few options, we decided to get married at home. Mention a home wedding and most people assume you mean a garden ceremony and reception at the house. The benefit of our house is that it includes a…

Design— Architectural literature, products, a showroom and a home tour are just a few highlights to be found in this issue.…

Fashion designer Ingrid Starnes has released a new range of her Vetyver Bergamot candles, in handmade vessels by Auckland ceramicist Fiona Mackay. “We love the idea of making something special,” says Starnes, “which has a second life after the candle has been enjoyed.” Why handmade? We made our last beakers with Studio Ceramics, where a lot of Crown Lynn moulds and makers ended up. When that closed last year we could no longer get moulds made for us within cooee of what people could afford – we were really upset. So we figured that if they were going to cost that much, then we would work with artists we love. It means there’s no margin, but being able to keep making ceramics makes us really happy. We love them. How did…

Where did you draw the line on what to include, and what not to include, in the cabins? The composting toilet and outdoor shower were already built. The shower is (or was) built around a totara tree, the toilet is a decent stroll away on the ridge. The brief called for a bedroom, a living space, and a small kitchen. We decided that the bedroom and living room would be inside, and that the kitchen could be a simple lockable box that was sheltered but essentially outside. When the weather is good, the covered space between the cabins and deck areas around the cabins get far more use than the cabins themselves, but having a cosy place to retreat to when the weather packs in is essential. How did you…

Now, this is how a beach house should be: wet dogs and driftwood, wet towels and sand on the floor, discarded boardgames and kids – lots and lots of kids. It’s the school holidays and Kerry, her friend Philippa, and their combined broods of, oh, about a thousand excited primary-aged kids have just walked back from the beach to Kerry’s new Te Horo bach. They’re just in time. The sky is greywacke, Kāpiti Island has vanished in cloud and the fierce westerly nearly blows the kids through the beach-side sliding door. They rush off for hot showers.  It seems the death of the great Kiwi bach may have been exaggerated. This exuberant beach house by Gerald Parsonson for Kerry, her partner Richard and their family has a playfulness and craft…

What was it like working with family? It’s such a privilege working for anyone and having people put their trust in you. With family, the responsibility that comes with that definitely ramps up a few notches. We get on really well – we all have different skills and respect each other’s abilities, so I think we made a pretty good team. This project took 10 years. Was it tempting to add new ideas as they came along? In some ways I’m surprised that very little did change because Karena and Mike had a long time to live with things before really committing. There were some advantages to the slow pace – I think they tried every conceivable kitchen layout with temporary fittings before settling on the final layout. I only…

Tell us about your role with King Living? It’s about spreading the word – King is innovating in design. They’re starting to work closely with some of the best known names in Australian design, people like Charles Wilson and Tom Fereday. It’s a great story. Is there an Australian style or just a way of living? The country’s just too damn big – what works in the south of Tasmania is not going to work in the north of Queensland. But we respect the climate and the landscape. Australians are good at working with what they’re given. You’re known to dislike ‘trends’. It’s not that I don’t like trends, it’s that I wholeheartedly believe a home tells your story. You fill it with things you love and that mean something to…

On a crisp spring evening in early October, we celebrated our 2018 Design Awards. It was a pleasure to gather the finalists and their makers together at The Glassworks in Ponsonby, Auckland, a former glass-blowing studio that’s recently been converted into a beautiful space by Deadly Ponies. Nine of the country’s best new designs from the past year were on display, selected as finalists by our guest judge Mark Elmore – general manger of design at Fisher & Paykel – and me. The designs represented an impressive range of experience – we welcomed the likes of Resident Studio, David Moreland and Tim Webber; we were delighted to see architect Chris Beer – winner of our 2017 Home of the Year – make a foray into furniture design; and up-and-comers including…