Designer Phil Cuttance's new range

More NZ design, this time from regular Design Awards nominee, London-based Phil Cuttance. We like the look of his new 'Faceture' range, produced by casting water-based resin into a hand-made mould. Stocked at Essenze, Douglas + Bec and Simon James Concept Store.

And the finalists are...

Brian MacKay-Lyons and his wife Marilyn are on the plane back to Canada, and the Home of the Year judges have made their decisions. So, we're very pleased to annouce the finalists in our Home of the Year award 2012.

The winner will be announced at a cocktail function in Auckland on March 29, and the results published in our April/May issue, which is on sale from April 2.

In the meantime, we're busy getting our five very exciting finalists photographed to feature in our Home of the Year issue. (For those of you who can't wait, you can see amateur pics from our judging trip on our Facebook page or Twitter feed - just click on the Twitter box on the right-hand side of this page).

Anyway, the five finalists in the award (in no particular order) are:

• A home near Wellington by Jasmax
• A home at Pahoia, near Tauranga, by Warren & Mahoney
• A holiday home at Piha by Herbst Architects
• A bach at Onemana on the Coromandel Peninsula by Strachan Group Architects in conjunction with Unitec students
• A bach at Whangapoua on the Coromandel Peninsula by Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects.

We're really looking forward to publishing our Home of the Year issue and showing you how good these five homes are. Thanks to our Home of the Year partner Altherm Window Systems for making this all possible.

He's here! Still time for tickets...

The international member of our Home of the Year jury, Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, has just arrived in the country to help choose the winner of the Home of the Year award (the award results will be published in our April/May 2012 issue).
Now this you'll have to see: Brian will be giving public talks at the University of Auckland on Wednesday evening this week and at Victoria University of Wellington on Thursday evening. Tickets are still available at the link here. (You can pick your tickets up at the venues).

Brian is a leading proponent of regionalist architecture - many of his projects line Nova Scotia's rocky shores. He's also a sheep farmer and sea kayaker. His talks promise to be fascinating (Architects get 10 CPD points for attending.) You can view more of his terrific work here. Thanks to our Home of the Year partner Altherm Window Systems for making Brian's visit possible. We hope to see you on Wednesday or Thursday.

Our new look

Those of you who haven't picked up our latest issue yet may not know that we've undergone a bit of a redesign, courtesy of the lovely team at Inhouse Design. We've put some of the opening spreads from the features in this issue below as a tease. The first is a story about the artist Andrew Barber, with photography taken at his Auckland studio by Jeremy Toth.

On the western shores of Lake Taupo is this bach, a former dental clinic sensitively adapted by architects Rick Pearson and Briar Green, and photographed by Simon Wilson.

Some people have been asking, what's the difference? Good point, as we have opened stories with two full-page images many times in the past. The difference on these pages is our new fonts, but in the body of the magazine we also have a new five-column grid (the underlying organisational structure for the layout), as well as different treatments of small devices like bylines and picture captions. Not enormous changes, and the intention was for it to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary - so if you haven't noticed, that's OK!

Brian MacKay-Lyons: Tickets on sale now!

The international member of our Home of the Year jury, Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, will visit New Zealand in February to help choose the winner of the Home of the Year award (the award results will be published in our April/May 2012 issue).

He'll be giving talks in Auckland (on February 8) and Wellington (on February 9) when he's here, and tickets are now on sale at the link here. Brian is a leading proponent of regionalist architecture, as well as being a sheep farmer and sea kayaker, so his talks promise to be fascinating (Architects get 10 CPD points for attending.) Thanks to our Home of the Year partner Altherm Window Systems for making Brian's visit possible.

That's Brian below, and a shot of one of his buildings by Greg Richardson. For more information about Brian and his work, you can visit his website here.

Our new cover

Our new cover features an outdoor room on Great Barrier Island, designed by Lance and Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects and photographed by Jackie Meiring. We really like it and hope you do too - subscribers should receive their copies today, and the magazine will be on newsstands on Monday December 5.

Our new issue also features a slick black cottage by Fearon Hay Architects on Great Barrier Island, a colourful, 50s-inspired bach on the Kapiti Coast by Parsonson Architects, New Zealand-born architect David Howell's glamorous New York apartment, a former dental clinic reinvented as a bach at Lake Taupo by Rick Pearson and Briar Green, and lots more. The graphic design boffins among you will also be interested to know that this issue features a redesign led by Arch MacDonnell at Inhouse Design. Let us know your thoughts on it...

From our archives: A royal visit, 1953

In 1953, the visit of the Queen and Prince Philip was considered significant enough to make the cover of our predecessor, Home and Building.

Travel: Copenhagen's Kastrup Sea Baths

Copenhagen's Kastrup Sea Baths, designed by White Arkitektur AB and built in 2004, are a delighful invitation to take a dip. And we needed enticement the day we visited in August, during a month in which the Danes had been complaining about their cooler-than-usual summer. There was one other couple at the baths, but they'd already been in the water. The lifeguard on duty was bundled up in a fleece jacket and scarf. It was only 16 degrees, but we had to go in, as we'd come all the way from New Zealand.

Besides, the baths themselves are fantastic - in reality they are not baths so much as a circular, sheltered platform at the end of a wharf that extends from the beach. (It's a short ride - about 15 minutes - on Copenhagen's new subway from the central city to a stop that's a few minutes' walk from the beach). The structure contains changing rooms and culminates in a diving platform.

The great advantage of the circular timber structure is that there is always somewhere to shelter from the breeze. 

From the top of the diving platform, the view north towards central Copenhagen also takes in some of the offshore wind turbines. The images below show some of the other points from which swimmers can dive off the structure.

The clear panel you can see in the image below contains outdoor showers where swimmers can rinse off with a view of the Oresund Bridge leading from Denmark to Sweden as well as Santiago Calatrava's 'Turning Torso' residential tower in Malmo across the water.

In the photographs below you can see white doors which lead to the small changing rooms. That's the lifeguard reading in her chair - the cool temperatures meant it wasn't a busy day at the baths, but we were still pleased we took the plunge.



Our new cover

Our new cover features a home by Matt Brew of Cantilever Architects on Waiheke Island, photographed by Patrick Reynolds. Subscriber copies should arrive on Friday September 30, with copies on newsstands on October 3.

From our archives: The gnomic celebration, 1945

You can understand everyone was a little giddy, what with the war ending and all ... to celebrate peace, Home & Building published a tribute to garden gnomes and other enchanting outdoor creatures. "Maybe this is all just fantasy, but these ornaments do make any garden colourful, don't you think?"

My Favourite Building: Sir Eion Edgar and Dunedin's new stadium

A sneak preview from our October/November: Sir Eion Edgar, chairman of Forsyth Barr, has chosen Dunedin's spectacular new stadium (by Jasmax and Brisbane-based Populous) as his favourite building. The photograph is by Graham Warman. You can read what Sir Eion has to say about the building in our new issue, on newsstands October 3.

Travel: London's Serpentine Pavilion

If you're lucky enough to be travelling to London before October 16 (or if you're living there), we highly recommend you visit this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

From the outside, as you can see in the image below, it's an inscrutable black timber box. We haven't been able to work out what the timber is coated in, but it had a thick, hand-applied quality that lent an artisanal feel to the structure's exterior. 

There are three door-sized holes in the pavilion's exterior. Visitors can pass through any of them (entry is free). You then arrive in a dark, narrow corridor leading to other openings.

Once you've passed through these secondary doorways, you'll find the small miracle of a courtyard garden with planting designed by Piet Oudolf, the Dutchman who also had a hand in the planting on New York's High Line (along with a lifetime of fascinating projects (which you can read about here).

Zumthor's black walls throw Oudolf's pretty planting into sharp relief. It's a deeply contemplative space, surrounded by benches and tables and chairs with a view of the garden and the slice of sky above. On the way there, we'd wondered about the wisdom of Zumthor designing a garden space in the middle of Kensington Gardens, the enormous green space where the pavilion is located. But the courtyard garden works beautifully as a contrast to the open spaces outside, enhancing the appreciation of nature by confining it to this small space.

The modest but magnificent simplicity of Zumthor's pavilion is apparently typical of his work (we haven't had the good fortune yet of seeing any other structures by him, but many of you will know of the Thermal Baths at Vals, which you can see more of at the link here). His structures are rich in texture and materiality, but also inherently modest in their approach.

Each year the Serpentine Gallery commissions an architect who has not previously had a project built in the UK to design a summer pavilion in its grounds (the pavilions are auctioned off at the end of each season). Zumthor's pavilion is an interesting, self-assured contrast to the architectural fireworks of some of the projects of previous years. You can see a slideshow of previous Serpentine Gallery Pavilions on The Guardian's website at the link here.

From our archives: Favourite covers, winter 1939

A favourite cover from 1939, where an elegant combination of images reflects the magazine's desire to cater to a broad audience including architects, homemakers, and gardeners (then as now, the magazine included regular features on landscape design).

From our archives: A new series

Our next issue (published October 3) marks our 75th birthday: 75 years, that is, since Building Today magazine was first published (Building Today became Home and Building Today a few issues later, then Home & Building, Home & Entertaining in 1999, and HOME in 1997).

Despite all the name changes, our trawl through the archives reminded us that our mission today remains pretty much the same as it was then: to showcase New Zealand's best homes (and buildings in general, in the early days) and celebrate great New Zealand architecture.

The image above is of our first-ever cover (now stored in binders in the safe hands of the Architecture Archive at the University of Auckland). We'll be showing you a range of goodies from the archives on the blog over the next few weeks. And, of course, there's a special 75th anniversary feature in the October/November issue of the magazine, which has just gone to the printing press.

From our archives: A new series

Our next issue (published October 3) marks our 75th birthday: 75 years, that is, since Building Today magazine was first published (Building Today became Home and Building Today a few issues later, then Home & Building, Home & Entertaining in 1999, and HOME in 1997).

Despite all the name changes, our trawl through the archives reminded us that our mission today remains pretty much the same as it was then: to showcase New Zealand's best homes (and buildings in general, in the early days) and celebrate great New Zealand architecture.

The image above is of our first-ever cover (now stored in binders in the safe hands of the Architecture Archive at the University of Auckland). We'll be showing you a range of goodies from the archives on the blog over the next few weeks. And, of course, there's a special 75th anniversary feature in the October/November issue of the magazine, which has just gone to the printing press.

Events: Sean Godsell in Auckland

Righto, we're back. Sorry about the silence, but we went on holiday and it seemed a good opportunity to allow you to watch our short web films of the homes shortlisted in our Home of the Year award. In any case, some news: Australian architect Sean Godsell is giving a talk in Auckland next Thursday September 29 at 6pm at the Dorothy Winstone Centre, Auckland Girls' Grammar School, 16 Howe Street, Auckland. Tickets are $25 from Ticketek (student tickets are $20) - you can purchase them at the link here. For information on other Architecture Week events, visit the site here.

On our cover: Home of the Year 2011

We're delighted to announce that the winner of the HOME New Zealand Home of the Year 2011 is the Kare Kare House, designed by Michael O'Sullivan of Bull O'Sullivan Architects. You can read all about it in the new issue of HOME, on newsstands from tomorrow, August 4. Thanks again to our awards partner, Altherm Window Systems.

 

On film: SHORTLISTED Coatesville House by Ponting Fitzgerald

This house by David Ponting and Matt Fitzgerald of Ponting Fitzgerald was shortlisted for the Home of the Year 2011.

On film: FINALIST Naish house by Richard Naish

Architect Richard Naish of RTA Studio designed this Auckland house for himself, his wife and three children. It's a finalist in this year's Home of the Year award.

On film: WINNER Home of the Year 2011 by Michael O'Sullivan

This year we worked with Wellington's Gibson Group to produce short films of each of the shortlisted homes in the Home of the Year award (thanks to our camera operators, Jon Bowden and Gary Hopper, and editor Colin Hodson). Here's a look inside the winning home by Michael O'Sullivan of Bull O'Sullivan Architects. As always, remember to pick up a copy of our August/September issue for full coverage of this home and the others in the award.