HOME covers the best New Zealand architecture, design and interiors. It features inspirational, ingenious and just plain breathtaking homes from all over the country – as well as new restaurants, exciting art and the latest furniture releases.
THIS ISSUE IS about looking back, and looking forward, while taking time to celebrate the here and now with the 2025 Home of the Year special features. Our overall winner, the Home of the Year 2025, is an expression of unapologetically bold design; a place of grand ideas and big gestures. It’s a project that took 14 years from start to finish, and an addition to the wild west coast that will no doubt provide inspiration for years to come (page 94). Coastal homes played a significant part in this year’s awards programme, with the Coastal Home of the Year being an incredible and highly complex project wedged between a slither of Auckland Transport land and a daunting cliff face at Onetangi on Waiheke Island. Intricately conceived by Herbst Architects,…
Art, unveiled The Aotearoa Art Fair is back this May with an immersive new programme and its largest, most internationally diverse offering to date, showcasing 44 galleries and 150 artists. Under the leadership of new director, Sue Waymouth, the fair will present a combination of established, prominent galleries alongside a number of newer, cutting-edge galleries. “During the fair, the city will come alive with art — large-scale sculptures, live performances, and activations — bringing together an incredible community of artists, gallerists, collectors, and the art curious for four days of inspiration and connection.” Alongside experiencing the dynamic gallery presentations, visitors will be able to engage with the curated Talks Programme, Let’s Talk Art, in which 30 speakers will give 10 talks on art, design, and architecture. Aotearoa Art Fair will…
TUCKED AWAY IN central Christchurch, unassuming from the street, an immersive new showroom presents a compelling take on the possibility of material, and the delicate fusion of tradition and innovation. Its design is anchored by an ambiguity of sorts — it could be many things: an event space, part of a home, or a workplace. The design, a collaboration between Warren and Mahoney, VidaSpace and Powersurge, grew from the concept of ‘storytelling’ evident in European showrooms and was defined by VidaSpace’s ethos of empowering ambitious design. “We wanted to create a space that is anything but a traditional retail space … and we also wanted to push the boundaries of our materials,” VidaSpace’s Ahlia McKenzie explains. The result is entirely captivating; divided into three distinct zones: Entice, Excite, and Educate,…
PLUMBLINE’S JONATHON HALL describes the collaboration as a long-anticipated meeting of creativity. “I’d always admired Gidon’s work, including his past collaborative projects. My goal was to give him the parameters and let him craft a design unlike anything else in our collection. I think the result is incredibly striking and beautifully resolved.” The design process was shaped by an interplay between tradition and innovation. “We aimed to find an optimal balance between reductive sculptural form and utility. We moved fluidly between traditional analogue methods and state-of-the-art digital modelling, making small discoveries along the way. The model-making process involved traditional plaster turning — essentially unchanged for over 2000 years — alongside contemporary 3D modelling and printing,” Gidon says. The result is the Terra Basin, a strong, sculpted form made locally from…
How did growing up in New Zealand help to shape your world view and approach to design? I’m incredibly inspired by the elements and how the sun interacts with the clouds. Having spent so much of my youth on the mountains above the clouds, I still draw inspiration from those moments. In my opinion, there is no better designer than Mother Nature, and New Zealand has some of the best nature in the world, so I feel very lucky to have grown up there! My attitude is also very Kiwi, I feel. I try to always find a way of making things work and apply some ingenuity. Your work is returning to New Zealand with Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert this year. Can you tell us about the pieces that will be…
PERHAPS AN EXCLUSIVE retreat, a private home, or a getaway for groups, this captivating concept is the vision of Roberts Gray Architects — it is an overtly contemporary overture toan internationalism rarely seen in New Zealand coastal settings. Devised for a vast 53-hectare site at Mataka Station in the Bay of Islands, of which the building site size covers 5000 square metres, and which is currently for sale through Future Isles, the concept was designed to articulate the possibilities and ultimate design freedom a site like this presents. “We were asked to develop a speculative scheme for the site, a vision for what could be here,” architect Nick Roberts explains. “It’s high up above the coastline but it also has proximity and private access to the beaches. “You almost feel…
