Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 - January 2022 i Home New Zealand

As I write this, Aucklanders are enjoying ‘Freedom Day’. Today marks 107 days since we went into the latest lockdown. Coincidentally, it’s also the closing date for entries to Home of the Year 2022, so there’s a lot to celebrate today — and just as much to look forward to in the year ahead. While the next few months look sure to deliver yet more ups and downs as we navigate this pandemic, we’re now used to working remotely and to acting swiftly to find different ways of achieving our goals. What the last year or so has taught us as a team is definitely resourcefulness and flexibility, and the importance of thinking outside the box — the same qualities we are seeing in the New Zealand architecture and design…

Big Wave Surfer: The greatest rides of our lives By Kai Lenny Rizzoli There is undeniable madness in big-wave surfing. Little else explains a sport that requires towing someone into raging walls of saltwater that rise anywhere between six and 30 metres tall, only to slide down while standing atop a thin, seven-metre board propelled by unpredictable forces of nature and physics. This book, by renowned Hawaiian big-wave surfer Kai Lenny (pictured, bottom left), brings together the tall tales and slippery stories of 30 of the most respected big-wave surfers from around the world as illustrated by photographs by some of the best in the business. The stories about their favourite waves are told in that well-rehearsed manner of someone who has spun the yarn often and, in the process,…

The pastor and academic Douglas Horton wasn’t talking about swimming pools but his quote says plenty about this landscaping project. The aesthetically simple but conceptually complex design in Auckland’s Murrays Bay includes a pool, a barbecue area, and somewhere shady to sit and relax, all squeezed into an L-shaped sliver of land that wraps around the modern home. On top of the limited space, there was a height differential — a drop of almost two metres between the front and the back of the dwelling — which made design more complicated. The ocean views needed to be referenced, and the area had to be in keeping with the architecture of the home and the suburban street. “It was such a tight spot,” explains Campbell Strachan of Strachan Group Landscape Architects.…

Material style The faceted kitchen island and bathroom vanity basins at architect Matt Brew’s Eastern Beach house are a thing of beauty. Constructed from slabs of Terra Vein Travertine sourced by Artedomus from an exclusive quarry in Italy’s Tuscany, the natural stone displays a rich, creamy beige with lovely organic striations that range in colour from grey rust and black to soft, almost chocolatey brown. The earthy stone has a brushed finish that adds a soft texture and further enhances the material’s tactility — that delightful feel of something handmade and soulful. This is teamed with Artedomus’s French oak plank finished in French Grey. The tannins are manipulated to produce an aged base colour, which is then oiled with a soft light oil blend. “Together they form a sophisticated palette…

From curves to Japandi Brad Wallace, the general manager of Plumbline, points to its most recent trends report in which 10 overarching themes have been explored and predicted as likely paths the bathware industry is expected to take. These range from raw and textural (think natural stones or ridged and knurled surfaces, all with increasingly strong pigments) through to a trend that began in 2019 and many are calling “Japandi” (Japan meets Scandinavia), which is full of minimalism with allusions to those two strong design traditions. Arches and curves — a favourite of cutesy, independent, millennial commercial spaces — continue to make inroads into the home. Last year’s full-circle mirrors are being stretched into ovals, and sometimes trimmed at the bottom to look like a radius window. For Plumbline, metallics…

Concrete yet liquid There is a beautiful rawness to polished concrete and this freestanding bath and basin by Concrete Nation takes advantage of those imperfections for a truly tactile finish. Each piece has a visual patina, colour variation, surface variation, and air pockets, giving each and every one of these products a uniqueness and a beauty that will only gain in character over its lifetime. Durability is also key here, with Concrete Nation being an award-winning and globally renowned thought leader within architecturally designed concrete products. It has developed its own ultra-high-performing concrete mix, using glass fibre reinforcement. It has also added a sense of fun to its materials by incorporating a natural tinted oxide throughout, creating bespoke and unique colour offerings. This double-ended bath has soft, streamlined edges and…

Kirsten Matthew For this issue, you penned features about a home on Eastern Beach and a landscape design on the North Shore. What were the most memorable aspects of each? The thinking that goes into an architectural project is invariably the most interesting aspect for me. I’m always impressed by the practitioners who create these homes and landscapes and the experience and knowledge that inform their design choices. I think we undervalue just how complicated the process is of conceptualising a space that is both beautiful and functional. Your pieces for this issue were written during lockdown. Tell us about your experiences of working at home over the past couple of years. Working at home is easy for me and, in a way, where I am happiest. I was a…

From the soulful sprucing up of a community centre and humble extensions; from tiny homes for at-risk youth through to extensive new builds for corporate and civic projects – the scope and breadth of architecture in Aotearoa was recently celebrated at the 2021 New Zealand Architecture Awards. Here’s a brief selection of some of our many favourites. @nziarchitects…

Summer Serenity Choose well for your walls with Resene Zylone Sheen Zero – no added VOCs, low odour and Environmental Choice-approved.…

There are mere handfuls of architectural firms in New Zealand with a wide enough body of residential work to allow one to compare and contrast, find similarities, and try to ascertain the places where motifs are being pulled and stretched in search of some sort of musicality. Auckland-based RTA Studio is one of these, and this 290m² project, known as Bob's Cove House, on the edge of Lake Wakatipu is one of those in which stylistics are strongly expressed in search of something highly individualistic yet entirely contextual. Take, for instance, the series of gables. “We’ve been exploring the gable form for many years,” says RTA’s director Rich Naish — speaking of one of the many elements, exemplified in this house, that his firm has explored ardently. “It’s a vernacular…

Designing this renovation for a family returning to New Zealand after many years living in New York, architect Jessica Walker of Bureaux envisioned an enviable balance between functionality and beauty. The original Arts and Crafts cottage in Remuera had much going for it, but the interior flow and functionality didn’t work as well as they could for a growing family, and the outdoor area had potential. Enter a 12-square-metre pool house, the edge of which forms the boundary of a new private and sheltered rear garden. “Both structures riff on the characteristics of local heritage, although the commitment to unstained, cedar-shingle cladding also speaks of the Arts and Crafts charms of Rhode Island houses,” Jessica explains. The new interior is layered not just with timber, stone, and metal but also…

It’s not often you hear an architect comparing a house to the way a bulldog stands head on against the wind, but that’s exactly how Daniel Marshall describes this intriguing home on Auckland’s rugged west coast. It’s here in Piha that architect Daniel Marshall’s firm completed its first job — designing a replacement dwelling on the site of a 1960s house in North Piha that had burnt down. “I was really struck then by the strong landscape and the fierce elements,” Daniel explains. When it came to Daniel Marshall Architects’ second house in Piha — not far down the road from that initial project — it was again the elements that defined the plan. As a community, Piha is a small but tight-knit sort of place. Power outages are common,…

Hand dyed and woven, with a unique and intricate design, the limited edition Pars range brings a mix of navy, blue, cream and teal hues in an elegant stripe. The densely woven, silky soft, natural fibres feel blissfully indulgent and will complement any design aesthetic in the home. These, like all of Ottoloom’s products, are made with independently certified 100 per cent organic cotton and given the artisanal, handmade process, they are one-of-a-kind products that bring originality and uniqueness to any bathroom. ottoloom.co.nz…

The sun pours into the recently finished hillside home of architects Celia Goldsmith and Ari Stevens, casting their mid-century furniture in light and shadow. Panel windows frame the view of Wellington Harbour and the sky beyond. Along Evans Bay Parade, swimmers splash, bush birds sing, and blue sea glistens under scattered sailboats. “I love this room,” says Celia of the main kitchen / living room while playing with baby Olive. “It’s easy to forget you’re actually inside a house and not in a treetop nest.” Whangarei-born Ari, who works for Athfield Architects, and Taranaki-born Celia, Isthmus Group, met at architecture school. After the young couple had rented for years, Celia’s parents suggested they build a house up the back of the parents’ Evans Bay site. “It looked pretty gnarly,” confesses…

Moonlight Bay Road hangs perilously above the Tasman a mere five minutes’ drive from downtown Raglan. The miniscule, downward-rolling street is packed with houses that have dug their retaining poles deep into the soil of the northeast-facing cliffside. One of those pads has an impressive number of poles, which were drilled into all manner of stone and sediment weeks before New Zealand went into the cluster-bomb that was level four lockdown in March 2020. “We literally just had to walk off [site] and leave it for six weeks. I was pretty worried, you know. Worried that some kid would fall in a hole or something stupid,” says its owner, builder/developer Ben Lee, pointing out that had there been any significant rainfall during that period, the problems would have been so…

This pair of geometric structures, etched against the sky, is in precast concrete This is a house of two faces: one robust, immoveable; the other elegant and light on its feet. It’s a contradictory coupling that perfectly suits this Mangawhai site, where the sculpted ground is like a hillside pā, and the home is fortified with concrete walls from the rear but with the privilege of a bird’s eye vista over the vast, verdant terrain. When the owners, who are of Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Porou descent, first set foot on the land, it spoke to their souls: “We walked onto it and knew immediately: this is where our destiny is.” To be fair, anyone could see that this two-acre section was special. It overlooked a semi-rural enclave pocketed with…

With the use of an antiquing process, mirrored glass can become much more than just functional — it becomes a sophisticated and engaging visual feature and a work of art in its own right. Incorporating antiqued mirrored glass into bathroom design provides endless possibilities to create striking and personalised design elements — from alluring walls of glass to vanity splashbacks. In a recent project (pictured), which was part of a full interior renovation of a Takapuna home, Image Glass worked with Natalie Du Bois (Du Bois Design) to create a bespoke antique mirrored wall and custom mirrors to reflect a feeling of yesteryear with an air of romanticism. The wall comprises individual antiqued mirrored panels, inset with an octagonal bevelled mirror in the centre. Set against the charcoal tone of…

Beam Fans of architecture will know the importance of the modest I-beam in the construction of everything from small homes to the most iconic buildings in the world. Now, your own bathroom can pay homage to the material with the award-winning Beam Shelf. The shelf has been complemented with a basin designed to evoke ancient bowls and created from a soft-touch, natural stone-looking material made from sustainable resins of vegetable origin (corn). Designed by Guerra Office and Sina Sohrab for Zucchetti.Kos. Rise The design concept of the Rise basin seems fairly simple: a dialogue between two- and three-dimensional planes. There are flat and deep elements, rectangular geometries, and oval components all arriving at a delightful balance of form and materiality. The Rise also offers a variety of customisable options, such…