Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i Home New Zealand

Let me assure you that nothing is finer than sitting at home after dark when the heat has gone out of the day, with a glass of wine and a book, and a tufty sort of breeze wafts through an open French door. Oh, wait. There’s one thing better: sitting outside, long after dinner is finished, with a light on inside and maybe a candle outside, a murmur of conversation drifting in the dark. And yet: mosquitoes. They’re bad at our place, so each evening at this time of year, I spend a good 15 minutes roaming the house to set up The Perimeter. At minimum, that’s two mosquito coils, one on the front deck and one on the back, their smoke wafting through the house like some sort of Buddhist…

“It’s a sculpture that makes rainbows,” says Sarosh Mulla of Pac Studio of the artwork you see on these pages. With design partner Aaron Paterson, Mulla designed the large-scale mechanical and optical public artwork, which creates a rainbow when its prisms are aligned with the sun’s rays. “It’s about creating an immersive experience of natural light through interactive play; connecting art, design, science and engineering.”  What was the brief? To create an interactive public artwork that encourages play for children and adults within Auckland’s central suburbs, but the project has expanded to include discovery of scientific instruments and effects. What does it do and why does it do it? It lets people playfully experience the essence of light and its spectrum of frequencies through a simple physics experiment. It makes…

Dawson & Co moved into the 1920s E&H Building on The Strand in Parnell, Auckland four years ago. All raw concrete and exposed steel trusses, it’s flooded with natural light and has a lush piazza at the rear, plus plenty of parking. Now, the store has expanded into the tenancy next door, uniting the two spaces and providing much-needed room for two new collections about to land in New Zealand. “There are very few buildings with such character available with the size of space we required,” says owner Angus Dawson. “When the opportunity arose to take over the entire building, it was irresistible.” One thing hasn’t changed: the space has proven to be most hospitable, with a working kitchen from IMO. “It’s about creating a total experience,” says partner Scott Fisk. “We…

So often, we privilege the young, and ignore our elders. In his ‘Ripe Fruit’ series, photographer Simon Devitt documents creatives in late career, at the peak of their powers. In volume 1, he documented the life of Mary McIntyre; in volume 2, we see the life and studio of the architect Tony Watkins, who lives at Karaka Bay in Auckland, a small beachside settlement accessible only by boat or on foot. Devitt documents the life of Watkins, who is also a writer, environmentalist and keen photographer, in black and white: the clutter and detritus, and his commitment to vernacular architect in a boatshed. “The primary role of architecture is to enhance our relationship to the astonishing natural world,” writes Watkins in the afterword. “To give form to love, so that we might…

“This kitchen was designed for a client for whom I had done three previous kitchens. I also designed the display shelving and joinery in the living spaces. The kitchen has large sliders on the east and west, which provide fabulous indoor-outdoor flow on both sides and a lot of natural light. The abundance of light brought about the decision to use melamine for the doors, which will permanently retain their colour in the strong Canterbury sunlight. Corian® Glacier White was the obvious choice for the seamless, fine and elegant benchtop, with its 12mm shark-nose profile. Popping the central joinery out from the back wall and framing it with shark-nosed Corian, then repeating this feature by framing the entire island in Corian Glacier White with the same profile, creates a similarly…

Likuliku Lagoon Resort is a wilderness island retreat complete with over-water bures carefully positioned in a protected marine sanctuary. The resort pays homage to traditional Fijian values, with traditionally-styled and constructed bures reminiscent of an ancient village when viewed from the water. The resort interiors feature an exotic mix of natural materials and contemporary elements – the perfect blend of modernity and tradition. Likuliku Lagoon Resort likulikulagoon.com…

Project Villa addition Architect Natasha Markham, MAUD Location Eden Terrace, Auckland Brief Create an open-plan living area and better connection to the garden. Just about every villa has one: the dreaded lean-to, with sloping ceilings, small windows and a rabbit warren of rooms jammed next to each other. Often derided; usually demolished. But when it came to reworking this villa in Eden Terrace, Auckland, Natasha Markham of MAUD decided on a much more subtle approach. Instead of demolishing the lean-to, she made her own addition, which she jokingly calls a ‘lean from’, to house a new dining area. After a few years in the original villa, Markham’s clients found it was inadequate for family life (they have two young children), but the north-facing back yard and tight-knit community meant they…

The young couple in the old photograph sits cross-legged on a poppy-red shagpile, a collection of vinyl records spread before them. A Gordon Walters painting hangs on the wall behind and a Barcelona chair is placed, somewhat incongruously, in front of the entrance to this formal living room. The scene, shot in 1973 for Australian Home Journal, is patently staged, yet intrinsically redolent of its time. Robert Railley doesn’t quite recall how the feature on his first home, in Auckland’s St Heliers, ended up in this trans-Tasman magazine, but he has vivid memories of designing and building the house. “I was a struggling young architect with limited resources, so I got pretty involved,” he says. “I loved the physical endeavour and on-site problem solving.” Forty-five years later, architect Daniel Marshall…

Had you designed a home for someone who uses a chair before? No, but I’d shared a bedroom with Stew! It wasn’t the only first for you with this home. You had never been asked to include a sauna, nor had you had a design go to public consultation? This is the only project that we have completed that has required its resource consent to be publicly notified. The main point of concern was that it would change the streetscape. An objector to the home said the design was a very blunt, shed-like form, which is exactly how we described it too! Why put the office space on the upper level? The idea was that the home office was part of the living space; this was important. We didn’t want…

Call it the long goodbye. After more than two decades in a home they have loved, restored and treasured, Michelle and Gary Backhouse were in no mad rush to close its handsome, jarrah-wood front door behind them for the final time. ‘Otari’, their century-old home, an elegant brick-and-title house designed and built by the celebrated Arts and Crafts architect James Walter Chapman-Taylor in Wellington’s Ngaio, sold last year. But, by negotiation with the new custodians of this taonga, the couple gave themselves a generous four months to farewell a home and garden that has been at the centre of family life for 23 years. “It is a wrench, there have been tears, but we’re doing the right thing,” says Michelle, who with Gary, runs Backhouse, the furniture and lighting business…

What’s the clever detail you’ve employed under the cedar roof with the waterproof Butynol to prevent moisture penetrating? I saw some rural buildings on a work trip to Chile which had layered planks of wood as a wall and roof cladding, offering a great uniform finish over the whole building. We nailed cedar into raised Butynol-clad battens, which have a small cross fall to each gable end. Should water penetrate the cedar, then it will be evident as it spills over the gable end. This hasn’t happened. Which design detail do you enjoy most about the house? We all enjoy the opening wall from the bathroom – the kids can come in after a swim at the river or enjoy a bath with the wall open to view the stars.…

When the entries to Home of the Year come in, the HOME team gets an insight into what’s happening in the best architecture practices around the country. The judges get together – this year, I’m joined by Lance and Nicola Herbst (winners in 2016 and 2018), and Paraguay’s Gloria Cabral – to sift through the entries, searching for the strongest projects. It’s a daunting task, but eventually the key projects emerge: we choose this one over that one for very good reasons and we say no, often to fine pieces of architecture. Trends start to emerge as the competition heats up. In 2018, the shortlist was scattered from one end of the country to another, with a particularly strong showing from Canterbury. This year, they’re focussed on Auckland, Wellington and…

Home of the Year 2019 is Altherm Window Systems’ 10th year as principal sponsor. To celebrate, we’ve collected a handful of South Island architectural highlights from their decade of extraordinary commitment. If building in the North Island tends toward airy pavilions and timber sheds, then building in the South comes with a bit more weight. Houses have to deal with both cold winters and baking hot summers, and they also have to deal with almost overwhelming landscapes. Architecture here has to be uncompromising and respectful; standing up to and fitting in with the surrounding environment. 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 a demanding climate. Most notably,…

Thomas Seear-Budd The Wellington photographer journeyed to Belgium to visit Vincent Van Duysen, p.44. What took you to Antwerp to meet Vincent Van Duysen? I’ve been a fan of Vincent’s work for some time and I really wanted to experience his work in the flesh. I reached out to Vincent and quickly formed a good relationship with him and his team. He very kindly agreed to meet me at his home in Antwerp to conduct the interview and shoot.  What did you most enjoy about Van Duysen’s home? The sense of calm. The soft textures, tones and beautiful smells create an extremely comfortable and contemplative environment. The varied nature of the spaces was also very interesting. The ground floor is very open and light, whereas the loft is dark and…

If cyclists are repeatedly found to be among the happiest of commuters, then riders of e-bikes must be ecstatic. For those with a long commute, the Maverick by Australia’s Michael Blast adds an extra element of on-road style. We love its raking lines – you can choose from a range of colours on the frame and tank, which hides the battery – and vintage touches, including leather-like grips and white-wall tyres. It’s also a breeze to ride, with 350kw of power, multi-stage assist and a thumb throttle. One for the wishlist. RRP $3490. Maverick e-bike revbikes.co.nz…

Late last year, Auckland’s Nourish Group reopened Andiamo, which had closed on the same site several years before. “Andiamo had been an instiution in our community for years,” says Nourish’s Paula Sigley, “and we wanted to re-create a warm and inviting local.” Any reservations bringing back such a beloved institution? Initially it felt like a brave decision, but as the build progressed locals would pop in to see the next move. Eventually, we gave up covering the windows to hide the build progress, as most of the community had popped in for a tour. The decision went from feeling like a brave one to feeling like the right one. How did you reference the original? I tried to re-create a sense of the inviting atmosphere through the warmth of the interior…

Tell us what you do and why you do it, in 50 words or less. I bring product ideas to life, using the magic of industry and craft. I imbue objects with personality and character. I place things that don’t yet exist into a context of use and human behaviour. I do it because I have a vision of the way things could be. How did you get started in design and what did it teach you? It came from a school teacher’s suggestion. I’ve always enjoyed combining abstract thinking with practicality. I didn’t necessarily know industrial design would offer that, but it seemed like an academic way to pursue a love of art. Design education for me was a process of loosening up, not learning the rules – it’s important…

Project Owners’ retreat Architect Wendy Shacklock Location Langs Beach, Northland Brief Create a retreat that sits away from the active parts of the main holiday home. The addition to this Langs Beach holiday home is Wendy Shacklock’s 13th project for her clients. They’ve been with her for 25 years – repeat clients, she says, are one of the great things about getting older. “It’s wonderful because there’s all that trust and I take advantage of that trust, pushing them out further each time. It’s a lovely relationship,” she says. Shacklock has designed several projects on this house – a barrel-roofed pole house designed by Lillian Chrystall in the mid-1990s – which accommodates their growing extended family. After seeing to the rest of the house (most recently building a cedar facade…

Natasha Markham MAUD What’s your five-point guide – some general rules of thumb – to renovating in heritage areas that involve council and compliance? 01 Do the groundwork. Preparation is key to any successful renovation, but it’s particularly true for sites in heritage areas. Most projects involve a revision of the traditional layout to better reflect contemporary living, but old houses also require remedial work to make them warm, dry and comfortable. Preliminary work should focus on scoping the extent of work required and finding the balance between brief, budget and timeframe for your project. An architect can help you navigate this process and the subsequent stages. 02 Sort your consultant team. Properties in older areas typically come with additional constraints. Tight sites with old infrastructure often require a number of specialist consultants to assist…

Your practice is not known for renovations. Why take on this one? We engage in commissions based on the potential of the project and our relationship with the client. Although a clean slate can seem more attractive to an architect, sometimes existing limitations can force you to re-evaluate the design approach and reach more interesting outcomes. This project ticked all those boxes – the original house had fantastic potential, the clients were open to ideas and have wonderful style, and the spatial relationships of a 1970s house, with the scale of rooms, allowed me to explore different spatial processes. I do think we have to make the most of our existing housing stock; we have to invest good design in adapting our houses to the 21st century and hopefully beyond.…

Take a look at the Te Awanga house of Catherine and David Robertson on Google and one thing jumps out at you immediately. Where its neighbours all face diligently north, angled on their axis like obedient little stones, outdoor living areas on the northern side, the Robertson house has a subtly different orientation. It faces square down the neighbouring vineyard, perfectly orientated to the implicit grid it creates. The view funnels through the vines to the sea; to the south is a sheltered courtyard. “The idea was to capture the sea view between the rows of vineyard,” says architect Cecile Bonnifait of Bonnifait + Giesen. The Robertsons bought land in a farm-vineyard development in 2015: a large building plot overlooking neighbouring vines, with strict covenants including a four-metre height limit and…

Chapman-Taylor’s details are beautiful. What were your favourite parts of the house? The large sitting room with its inglenook fireplace. It was a favourite spot in both winter and summer. Every detail in the room, from the solid and perfectly formed adzed jarrah beams, to the hand-hewn book shelves and the steel casement windows, created a character-filled sanctuary. Even when the room was emptied it had an almost ecclesiastic ambiance. What did you come to appreciate about the design in the time you lived there? The strength, character and layout of the house. It has stood proudly in this north-facing position for more than 100 years without flinching. The use of honest materials and solid and unyielding double-cavity walls. It was built to last and even though it was a…

Circadian Rhythm By Derek Henderson Derek Henderson documents the quotidian and the happenstance, the strange and the grand, in Circadian Rhythm, a new photo book based on an exhibition in Wellington in late 2017. A freshly milled pine tree in a scalped landscape, a rose bush; a pile of used tyres or a boarded-up shop; breathtaking landscapes and their man-made additions. In all, it’s a sort of window into a particular sort of curiosity: less narrative, more a series of confounding moments that somehow add up to a particular view on the world. “I am not a religious person but I do think if there is a God then he or she is in the details, in the way that things are constructed, touching all points of the universe. It’s…

As summer gains intensity, New Zealanders opt for simplicity in every aspect of their lives. It’s a difficult thing to explain to visitors, but Kiwis still pride themselves on doing without. Our summer retreat away from the material – by no means available to everyone – has been the ultimate expression of contemporary luxury. Where, then, does this inversion of the usual meaning of luxury leave us when it comes to the interiors of our day-to-day dwellings? Luxury is a slippery word. Increasingly, it means very different things to different people, becoming less universal with time. Not so long ago, we had agreed luxuries. In New Zealand, this meant items that were imported and therefore expensive. As a child, I remember standing in awed silence in rooms covered with imported ‘French’ wallpaper.…

Home of the Year judge Gloria Cabral is one of South America’s finest young architects. From her studio in Asunción, Paraguay, she designs buildings that are both rough and polished, shadowy and almost monumental, an otherwordly combination of earthy brick and breathtaking leaps of imagination. Please join HOME and Altherm Window Systems for a glass of wine and a bite to eat, as Cabral discusses recent projects and the joys and challenges of architecture in South America. Project Regeneration In Transit Urbanism New Opening Five of the Best Retail The Set-up One to Watch Products A Beautiful Thing Out Now Architecture for Sale Destination Abroad AKL 20 February 2019 6.30pm Objectspace 13 Rose Road, Ponsonby, Auckland Tickets $35 gloriacabral.eventbrite.co.nz Gloria Cabral Gabinete de Arquitectura…

Adam Smith and Sam Chapman have brought you such treasures as the late and loved Golden Dawn and, more recently, Sherwood Queenstown – so-called ‘triple bottom line’ ventures that also intend to create community. Their latest enterprise, Treespace, takes things further. Together with backers, they’ve bought the 400-hectare Mt Dewar Station just out of central Queenstown, where they will replant 99 percent of the beech forest – cut down in the 19th century to create pasture for sheep. Through that, they’re planning 53 house sites, restricted to a modest 100-square-metre footprint, sold on a lease-to-own basis over 10 years, and creating 50km of public walking trails. “Mt Dewar is currently comprised of 1780 hectares of unproductive high-country farmland,” says Smith. “The project’s goal is to restore and rebalance 99 percent…

It says a lot that Danish design company Fritz Hansen – often considered the final word in beautiful chairs – last produced a wood chair in 1957; Arne Jacobsen’s ‘Grand Prix’ stackable, plywood piece. Sixty years on, at Milan Design Week last year, Fritz Hansen revealed the ‘N01’ chair – a new design produced in collaboration with Japanese design studio Nendo, which is headed by designer Oki Sato and one of the most celebrated designs of 2018. N01 walks a line between Japanese and Scandinavian traditions – simple and elegant, yet produced from 23 individual pieces, all of them hand made. The chair combines a curved back and seat – typical of Fritz Hansen’s stackable collection – with a solid timber frame. The skeleton is entirely on show: each piece…

In 1965, architect Mike Austin designed a house beside the water at Thorne Bay, on Auckland’s North Shore, for teacher Win Chapple. Chapple had bought the site – at the bottom of a cliff just off Kitchener Road – with her late husband, but he died before work could begin. There was no direct road access, there was bush behind and two huge pōhutukawa stood in the middle of the site. Chapple’s brief was admirable: the house was to be straightforward, and its occupants were not interested in obvious displays of money. It had to fit in with the landscape – and most importantly, it had to fit around the two ancient pōhutukawa. At a time when New Zealand architecture was defined by simple, shed-like forms and a sort of…

It wasn’t quite a miracle, but it was something special all the same. Stew Sexton drove from the supermarket to his new home in Wellington’s Eastbourne, parked the car in the garage, got the groceries out, took them upstairs to his kitchen and put them away in the pantry. Then he rang his wife Doreen, who was at work, to tell her the good news. Stew, you see, uses a wheelchair. The otherwise unremarkable business of getting the shopping into cupboards felt remarkable to the disability educator, who is a long-time campaigner for improved accessibility for people with disabilities. “It was liberating. I knew we’d done the right thing in making our home completely accessible,” says Doreen. The making of a home so thoroughly in tune with its owners’ needs was…

How does the house respond to its landscape? The house lies within a gently contoured Hawke’s Bay vineyard facing sea views in the distance. It’s designed as a sculptural folded roof creating a large canopy over the different quarters and echoing the surrounding landscape. Landscaping was planned to embed the house within its site, with all excavated fill being used to add to the gentle contours. Tell us about the roof angles? It mirrors the gentle topography of the surrounding landscape and was conceived as a single, gently folded structure that cloaks the entire house. As you move around the exterior, the form changes from what appears to be a simple gable typical of traditional rural New Zealand buildings, to more radical viewpoints where the different roof planes can be…

There’s something of the spirit of the old crib in Maarten Hofmans and Anna Rees-Hofmans’ home in the historic district of Arrowtown. While finesse sets the new a world apart from the old, they share intent – to accommodate the ebb and flow of people. For the Rees-Hofmans, it’s their blended family of four children, extended family and visitors. “We’ve had Anna’s parents living here for a year-and-a-half while they are building elsewhere, so it’s an exercise in how 118 square metres can deal with that,” says Maarten. “It seems to have worked pretty well and it’s been great for the kids to have Nonna and Poppa here.” The original crib comprised – in a bung-ol’, perfunctory Kiwi way – a 20-square-metre worker’s hut with an extra 35 square metres…

FEBRUARY • Feb/March issue on sale • Home of the Year judging • In Conversation with Gloria Cabral (Home of the Year guest judge) 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 JULY • Kitchen Day, Auckland AUGUST • Aug/Sept issue on sale OCTOBER • Oct/Nov issue on sale • Design Award winner and finalists announced • Home of the Year entries open NOVEMBER • HOME Tour, coming to a centre near you DECEMBER • Dec/Jan issue on sale • Home of the Year entries close homemagazine.co.nz…

It’s a lovely idea and long overdue. What do you hope readers and walkers will gain from it? A sense of the inner city, its history and contemporary character, and an awareness that Auckland has a wide range of interesting buildings. Most of the architectural styles of the last century and a half are represented in the city and, contrary to received opinion, many valuable heritage buildings still stand. How did you decide what to include? Some buildings have a civic importance that demanded inclusion – for example, Auckland Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery. Others are good exemplars of a type, or of the work of significant architects, or are interesting chapters in the wider story of Auckland. Also, the book is a walking guide to parts of the…