Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 - January 2021 i Home New Zealand

From the artful use of the semicircle in a Tutukaka Coast home that is akin to a series of timber tents, where passageways between rooms are exterior, to a particularly playful home on a steep site in Wellington, where the small footprint is offset by spaces that offer much more than the constraints of their dimensions, these are some of the projects that made a lasting impression this year, each a winner in the 2020 New Zealand Architecture Awards. Bowden House Architect: Belinda George Architects in association with Mandeno Design Image: Simon Devitt On the Tutukaka Coast north of Whangārei, this house was designed as a semicircular arrangement of living areas and bedrooms organised around a grass courtyard on a flat, clifftop site. #3 House Architect: Studio2 Architects Image: Simon…

Project: Croydon St. Design at.space Location Mt Eden This Mt Eden kitchen by at.space design is part of a larger renovation of a classic villa (for a family of five) which included modernising it, improving some of its internal flow, adding much needed insulation, light, and storage. The pièce de résistance, however, is a large, open-plan space at the rear of this home. The idea here was to stitch together the kitchen, living, and dining areas and visually connect them to the garden, with its inviting swimming pool and adjacent pool house. The first indication that something quite different lurks at the end of the traditional villa hallway is an American Oak ceiling that seems to spill from above a playful, glass-and-black-steel grid door. This overhead transition hints at a…

Project Buck Kitchen Design Melanie Craig Location Wanaka The act of cooking is one full of habits and ceremonies. This South Island kitchen takes the ritual of preparing gin-based drinks for visiting friends as one of its main design cues. It is theatrically lit from above and is generous with its task lighting, way-finding is assisted through shin-high LEDs, and lumens are even used to frame certain parts of the cabinetry to “create a floating look onto the textured bulkhead,” according to its lead designer, Wanaka’s Melanie Craig. There is a hero cabinet specifically designed for the owner’s spirits, and created in such a way that has practicality in mind as much as entertainment. “Large black-steel framed doors complete with a punched-clover mesh pocket back reveal [a] brass-clad interior, which…

Project Disraeli Kitchen Design Spatial Studio Location Auckland This kitchen is part of a villa extension by Jones Architects in Auckland’s Mt Eden. The idea was to create a contemporary, open-living kitchen and dining space at the back of the home and create a second tier for the master suite, robe, and ensuite. For the kitchen itself, “practicality and easy use of drawers were a top priority,” says its chief designer, Kristen Basra of Spatial Studio. “The client has difficulty with her fingers, so she requested the handles not to be an eyesore and also to have plenty of room for the grab and pull.” To this end, the designers created a few samples for her to test and came to a perfect solution with custom-made L-shaped oak handles: from…

Liisa hand-made a flag that read ‘boys aboard’. The idea was to hoist it onto the mast of their catamaran while approaching a new port, thus alerting other boatie families that young children had arrived and any form of socialising would be welcomed. To understand this Kerr Ritchie–designed house one has to go back to 2012 when Liisa, her partner Patrick, and their two preschool children set off from Florida, on a voyage that would take two years. This odyssey would see them cruise to Nassau, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Cartagena, Panama, and so on, until finally resting their sea legs on New Zealand soil. Their ocean home was Living, a Leopard 46 catamaran designed by Morrelli & Melvin and built in South Africa. According to reviews, this beautiful beast is…

There is an undeniable grandiosity to the Park Hyatt’s inner sanctum, a sort of cathedral-like gasp moment at being confronted with a huge, vertical void filled with modulated light and a powerful architectural statement. “The desire to create good, well-defined streets and urban spaces led to the rooms being stacked around the boundaries of the site, creating a large hollow rectangle,” offers Pete Bossley, lead architect for the hotel, as an explanation for this monumentality. “This inner atrium space was developed as a reference to a whare, with fins rising up the sides and across the skylit roof in a similar way to the poupou and heke of a whare.” Bossley, who has often quoted walled gardens and encampments as recurring themes in his oeuvre, accomplishes a sense of openness…

For a brutalist building that stands so four-square on its ground, this house is full of hidden delights. The really big surprise is only revealed once you have crossed a bridge onto the cobbled courtyard. Then you discover the house butts right up against a massive basalt cliff. The cliff, in so many ways, dictated the design. It chimes in with the concrete in colour and texture. The building’s severe lines also contrast dramatically, and in a very satisfying way, with the cliff ’s natural roughness. Architectural designer Nick Mann says this natural landscape feature also dictated other choices. While he might have preferred to open the house more to it, the risk of boulders tumbling down the cliff is not just hypothetical in Christchurch. Here, all of the elements…

Project: Contemporary Villa Design Studio Italia, Ponting Fitzgerald Location Herne Bay, Auckland This traditional villa in Herne Bay underwent a significant extension (by Ponting Fitzgerald), and the kitchen acts as a pivotal space between the outdoors and the interior social spaces. To ensure a smooth transition between all the spaces that radiate from here, Studio Italia’s in-house kitchen designer, Marketa Ramage, was tasked with imagining a space that took into consideration the old and the new, the light and the dark aspects of this highly respectful expansion. “The client came to us and they mainly wanted a dark kitchen,” says Marketa, “dark grey finishes: basically something moody.” Given that the extension was quite contemporary, she felt there should be two finishes — representing the old and new — working in…

Project Estuary House Design Ingrid Geldof Location Christchurch We talk to kitchen designer Ingrid Geldof about her Estuary House kitchen. What were your clients like? They are a retired couple with lots of energy. They enjoy the location at the water’s edge and enjoy reading at the kitchen bench — entertaining with friends and simple forms. They wanted an understated yet beautiful kitchen, not flashy and ostentatious, with a natural feel and look. What makes this space unique? Having been brought into the project from the outset of the design, we were able to ensure that windows and doors were located in line with joinery elements. Changing the architectural concept plans, I incorporated the full-length window in the scullery, providing an east view to the hills beyond the estuary. It…

It’s a bit Palm Springs, this house. It’s a bit casual, and it’s a bit dramatic — but only in just the right amounts. The site is the opposite. It’s coastal New Zealand at its very best, and what now stands high above Waipu Cove in Northland is a dose of everything at once. It retreats, extends, and falls away with a certain grace. It all happened by chance, really. A few years ago, long-time Lang’s Beach resident Carolyn was out swimming at neighbouring Waipu Cove and happened to turn around and look back at the coastline. Floating in the water, she noticed something she hadn’t before — a row of sections perched atop the cliff, obscured from view on the beach by the incline and a stand of favourably…

Wellington-born photographer Rachel Mataira has spent the past year documenting the social landscape of New Zealand as it weathered a myriad of challenges. Her first solo exhibition, The Year in Review, took place recently in Auckland’s Studio 230 and contained a selection of images of the main events that rocked the country. It culminates with aerial shots of the Auckland water dam reaching its expected levels, and other shots hinting at reconstruction and renewal. Pictured below January: Australian Bush Fires More rachelmataira.com Billie Culy’s recent series of photographs has its origins in detritus. The Nelson-based artist frequents second-hand shops, where she sources homewares, furniture, and props from other people’s domestic lives. These items are then arranged in ways that emulate editorially styled photo shoots or, in some instances, an interesting…

Project Belmont Kitchen Design Archco Location Rangiora This North Canterbury house was conceived by architect Gareth Ritchie (of Rangiora’s firm Archco) as his own family home. The overall form is a play on the traditional Scandinavian gable, with clipped eaves, a 40-degree roof pitch, and a completely timber-clad exterior. The kitchen, however, was “designed to be the heart and focal point of an open-plan living area,” says Gareth, “white walls and polished concrete floors are softened by the cabinetry in planked American Oak, complemented by white-quartz benchtops, brushed-nickel handles, and a dark marbled splashback that complete the simple material palette.” Part of the beauty of this space is its use of negatives forming the handles on cabinetry and seamlessly blending in with the integrated fridge face panels. The edges have…

Tim and Alison Hay first occupied this home around 15 years ago. They had bought the site in north-west Auckland three years earlier when it was an old orchard with a number of paddocks. Tim, one half of the leading architecture practice Fearon Hay Architects, explains that they wanted something in the countryside, but close enough to the Fearon Hay studio in the city. The organisational elements that informed the planning of the house came naturally due to the richness of the site. The house sits within what was the shelter belt, testament to the grids and lines of the orchard, and is bordered by a stream on the boundary of the land, which wraps around the house. Hay says that some of the early ideas for the house included…

Just south of Waihi township on a tiny peninsula, the land is rugged. Sweeping dunescapes cover the foreshore, providing a natural separation between the built environment and beach. Here, on the divide between suburban street and coastal wilderness, a rhomboidal retreat inspired in tone by the hues of driftwood offers a striking departure from the classic crib. When Brian White first arrived on-site to meet his clients, Dave Beattie and Cindy Bradley, he was perhaps a little underprepared for their resoundingly laid-back attitude. The meeting that transpired was carried out predominantly on the roof of Dave’s van — where Brian, Cindy and Dave stood to get a better perspective of the views, and the potential of what was a rather unusual site. Straddling street and rugged coastal wilderness in the…

There were 23 cousins in Wendy Bunting’s childhood world — and Dave Strachan was definitely one of the coolest. “I thought so, anyway, because he played in a band,” says Wendy. The admiration was mutual. Dave, who went on to set up Strachan Group Architects, remembers how Wendy, who grew up on a sheep and beef farm, knew how to stand up for herself. “She always spoke her mind,” he said. The pair had been good friends forever, so, years down the track when Wendy wanted to build, there was no question: SGA got the job. This cliff-side site in Leigh, where the views span across the ocean to Little Barrier Island, had an enormous aspect, but there were constraints. The building platform was limited to 200 square metres and…