Under threat: The Lomas house, Hamilton

Hamiltonians, contact your city councillors! TVNZ is reporting that a 1955 Hamilton home designed by Peter Middleton (that we featured in our October/November 2010 issue) is under threat of demolition.

Paul McCredie did a beautiful job of photographing the building for us (Linda Tyler wrote about the house). It's in a lush garden that the late Heather Lomas, the home's owner, spent decades creating. 

The home won an Enduring Architecture Award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects earlier this year. Middleton was commissioned to design the house by Heather Lomas and her husband Alan. Heather (below) lived in the house until her death in March. The house was later sold to a neighbour by members of Heather's family.

According to the TVNZ report, Waikato heritage consultant Ann McEwan "has called for the Lomas house on Lake Cres to be saved, and wants the Hamilton City Council to bend its district plan to save the 1950s building from demolition." You can read the TVNZ story here.   

It's a vexed issue, this. The new owner of the house is, legally, perfectly entitled to demolish it. The Lomas house, like many great modernist buildings, falls into an unprotected grey zone, where these structures are often not considered worthy of heritage protection until it's too late. 

Apart from the fact that we really like it, the Lomas house has genuine historical merit.  It is believed to be Hamilton's first architecturally designed house, and represented a brave early experiment in open-plan living. 

In its citation for the home's Enduring Architecture award, the NZ Institute of Architects said: 

The Lomas House is a fine building and also an inspiring architectural story. Designed for a young family in the 1950s, at a time when materials were rationed but optimism was far more plentiful, the house has gracefully kept pace with that family’s life for more than half a century. Frugal, but never mean with its spatial allocation, the house on its well-positioned site is cleverly and subtly arranged around the framework of a simple grid. Over the years, it has settled into a companionate relationship with the relaxed and unfussy garden. Inhabited beautifully, altered little, and maintained with care, the house is a case study in the lasting benefits of a sympathetic relationship between clients and Architect. 

Much of this inventiveness is evident in the home's careful planning, with level changes and sliding walls creating a greater sense of space in the living area.

In the TVNZ story, Ann McEwan suggests the Hamilton City Council should break its district plan rules to ensure the preservation of the house. The council says it hasn't received any demolition order for the building as yet. 

Fearon Hay wins chapel design competition

Fearon Hay Architects have won the much sought-after competition to design a chapel at Auckland's Holy Trinity Cathedral.

The firm's design features a glass-walled chapel with a canopy roof featuring mosaic artwork.

"This winning design, in its inherent simplicity and economy of means, provides a powerful starting point for achieving an inspiring, useful and ‘of its time’ Chapel," said David Sheppard, President-elect of the NZ Institute of Architects and the competition judging panel chair. "It promises to become a perfect complement to the great works of St Mary’s, Architect Towle’s Chancel, Dr Toy’s Nave and forecourt, and Jacky Bowring’s memorial gardens.”

It will be located at the south end of the Cathedral, where a "temporary" corrugated iron wall has stood for almost 40 years. Here are some of the images developed by Fearon Hay in their entry to the competition:

Our congratulations to Jeff Fearon and Tim Hay and the team at Fearon H`y Architects.

The design competition was run through the NZ Institute of Architects. The winning entry from chosen from a shortlist comprised of Athfield Architects, Architectus, and RTA Studio in collaboration with Bossley Architects. Work is expected to start next year.

New Zealand Architecture Awards 2012

We're pleased to hear this morning that our Home of the Year 2012 by Herbst Architects has picked up a New Zealand Architecture Award from the NZ Institute of Architects.

Also included in the 20 awards was Richard Naish of RTA Studio's family home in Auckland (below), a finalist in our Home of the Year award last year. The refurbishment of Wellington's Government House by Athfield Architects (below) picked up an award in the Heritage category, along with FJMT's design for the Auckland Art Gallery.

We were also delighted to see that the Lomas house in Hamilton, designed by Peter Middleton, picked up an award for Enduring Architecture (we featured Paul McCredie's photographs of it in a recent issue of HOME). This recognition for the house, unfortunately, is bittersweet, as the home's owner, Heather Lomas, passed away in March. Heather was delightful to deal with in the publication of her house and we know she would have been very pleased with the award, as she was rightfully proud of her house. Our sympathy to her friends and family.  

The New Zealand Architecture Medal, the top award given by the NZ Institute of Architects, will be presented to a single project from the list below at a ceremony in Wellington in late May.

Here's the full list of New Zealand Architecture 2012 Awards:

Commercial Architecture

ANVIL, Mt Eden, Auckland by Patterson Associates Limited

Knoll Ridge Café, Whakapapa, Mt Ruapehu by Harris Butt Architecture Ltd

Novotel Auckland Airport by Warren and Mahoney Architects

Te Wharewaka, Wellington by architecture+

Heritage

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki by FJMT + Archimedia architects in association

Government House Conservation, Wellington by Athfield Architects

Planning and Urban Design

New Lynn Transit-Oriented Development, Auckland by Architectus and Architecture Brewer Davidson Limited in association

Wynyard Quarter Urban Design Framework, Auckland by Architectus

Public Architecture

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki by FJMT + Archimedia architects in association

NMIT Arts and Media Building, Nelson by Irving Smith Jack Architects Ltd

Remarkables Primary School, Queenstown by Babbage Consultants Limited

Residential Architecture – Houses

House for Five, Grey Lynn, Auckland by RTA Studio

Tutukaka Beach House, Northland by Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects (Auckland) Ltd

Owhanake Bay House, Waiheke Island by Strachan Group Architects – SGA

Under Pohutukawa, Auckland by Herbst Architects Ltd

Small Project Architecture

Mt Iron House, Wanaka by Crosson Clarke Carnachan Chin Architects Ltd

St Thomas’ Chapel in St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland by Salmond Reed Architects Limited

Studio for an Artist, Napier by Ashley Cox Architect

Sustainable Architecture

MOTAT Aviation Display Hall, Westmere, Auckland by Studio Pacific Architecture

Enduring Architecture

Lomas House, Hamilton by Peter Middleton

Otago Boys High School Redevelopment 1982, Dunedin by McCoy and Wixon Architects Ltd

Junya Ishigami's Balloon

We're silly about the work of Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, who was in Auckland last week speaking at the NZ Institute of Architects' conference. During his talk, Ishigami showed images of his creation 'Balloon', an aluminium structure that weighed one tonne but floated ethereally in a Tokyo gallery space because it was filled with helium. It looked miraculous, and prompted an eruption of spontaneous applause. We found this YouTube video of it to show you:

Marshall Cook's Gold Medal

Congratulations to architect Marshall Cook, who has been awarded the NZ Institute of Architects' Gold Medal for 2010, given to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the practice of architecture. You may remember Marshall's own house in Auckland's Freemans Bay as a finalist in HOME New Zealand's 2008 Home of the Year award.

His awards citation made special mention of his house designs:

"The whole body of his work is characterised by a complete and exhaustive knowledge of materials, technology, colour and space placed at the service of a liberal, generous and humane design philosophy. The result has been a series of houses of the first quality. They form memorable and delightful environments within which domestic life in all its aspects is both celebrated and nourished. These houses represent high-water marks of contemporary New Zealand domestic architecture which will continue to be valued and studied by their future inhabitants and by architects."

These photographs of Marshall's own home in Freemans Bay were taken by Patrick Reynolds. This shot shows the confident mixing of materials - terracotta tiles, marble, timber fins - facing the street.

Inside, the house centres around an exceptionally comfortable kitchen and dining area that opens onto a small courtyard. This whole area feels remarkably spacious, especially when you consider that the home has been designed for a relatively compact inner-city site.

At the end of this bright, open space is much more snug and secluded living room. The stairs at the rear of this shot lead to Marshall and Prue's bedroom. All of it feels deceptively casual, but as with all apparently effortless structures, a great deal of consideration has gone into the creation of each of these spaces.