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...

Outtakes: Gerald Parsonson in the Marlborough Sounds

A little diversion for your Friday morning: these are outtakes from Paul McCredie's shoot of a bach in the Marlborough Sounds by Gerald Parsonson of Parsonson Architects that appears in our current (June/July) issue. As you can see, the home is made up of two pavilions, connected at ground level but elegantly offset from one another. Seeing them again here makes us wish we were on the way there now...

On an entirely unrelated note, we're just about to upload the trailer for our Home of the Year short film series. Stand by while we sort out the tech issues...

Parsonson Architects in Dwell

Gerald and Kate Parsonson's holiday home on the Kapiti Coast, which Gerald designed and which won our Home of the Year award in 2001, is on the latest cover of Dwell, the US architecture magazine. 



You can see a slideshow of Matthew Williams' photographs of the bach at the link here.

If Matthew's name seems familiar, that's because he used to shoot for us until he moved to New York a few years ago. It's great to see good New Zealand architecture represented abroad. Remember you saw it in our mag first!

Another of Gerald's designs features in our upcoming June/July issue (which also contains our annual furniture Design Awards). We send our last pages of that issue to the printers tomorrow (it'll be on sale on June 6), and after that we start tackling the Home of the Year 2011 issue.

Meet the Architects

Over the next few weeks we're hosting a series of evenings in Auckland and Wellington offering our readers the chance to come and meet the architects in our Home of the Year issue, and see them present some more of their work. The first talk is tomorrow night in Auckland, with another in Wellington on Thursday evening.

Here are the details. Entry is free - just register by emailing the address below. Architects get 5CPD points.

AUCKLAND
Tuesday August 18, 6pm
David Mitchell & Julie Stout
Mitchell & Stout Architects
Team McMillan BMW
7 Great South Road, Newmarket
With three appearances in the Home of the Year finals, Julie Stout and David Mitchell discuss their unique approach to creating unforgettable houses

Tuesday August 25, 6.30pm
Andrea Bell
Bossley Architects
Jerry Clayton BMW
445 Lake Road, Takapuna
With two homes in the Home of the Year finals in consecutive years, Andrea Bell reveals the secrets behind her innovative, beautifully crafted designs

Tuesday September 1, 6pm
Nicholas Stevens & Gary Lawson
Stevens Lawson Architects
Team McMillan BMW
7 Great South Road, Newmarket
The creators of a series of unforgettable sculptural homes reveal some of their other plans in development and discuss their ideas of what makes a great home

Tuesday September 8, 6.30pm
Michael O’Sullivan
Bull O’Sullivan Architecture
Jerry Clayton BMW
445 Lake Road, Takapuna
The designer and builder of his own ingenious family home in Mangere Bridge talks about the joys and challenges of doing it himself

WELLINGTON
Thursday August 20, 6.30pm
Gerald Parsonson
Parsonson Architects
Jeff Gray BMW
138 Hutt Road, Kaiwharawhara
After designing three baches in the Home of the Year competition, Gerald Parsonson discusses his approach to creating uniquely New Zealand homes

TICKETS ARE FREE
Please register by emailing the names and email addresses of each person attending to
architectstalk@acpmagazines.co.nz

Please note that by registering you are giving your consent to receive promotional offers from BMW. If you don’t wish to receive such offers, please say so in your email.

Our Home of the Year finalists

Sorry about the silence, everyone. We've been flat out preparing our 2009 Home of the Year issue. Which brings us to the point of today's post, which is to show you a sneak preview of the five finalists in the award. (We'll be announcing the winner on August 5, with mags on sale August 6. TV3's Campbell Live will screen a story on the finalists on their show on Monday August 3). The finalists shown here are in alphabetical order.

1. Andrea Bell from Pete Bossley Architects designed this big, beautifully crafted house on a clifftop in Glendowie, Auckland. It was photographed by Simon Devitt.

2. Mitchell & Stout Architects designed this home on Waiheke Island, an open-plan living and kitchen area bookended by two intriguing sculptural volumes. The photograph is by Patrick Reynolds.

3. Michael O'Sullivan of Bull O'Sullivan Architecture designed and built his own family home in Auckland's Mangere Bridge, which was photographed by Florence Noble.

4. Parsonson Architects designed this simple, light-as-a-feather bach at Shoal Beach in southern Hawkes Bay. It was photographed by Paul McCredie.

5. And Stevens Lawson Architects designed this long, low, mysterious home on Hawkes Bay's Te Mata Peak, which was photographed by Mark Smith.

For those of you who don't know, the competition works like this: In April, we call for entries from architects around the country, who send us plans and photographs of recently completed projects. Then our three-person judging panel - which this year was made up of myself (HOME New Zealand ed. Jeremy Hansen), Hugh Tennent, the Wellington architect who won our Home of the Year award in 2006, fellow Wellington architect Alistair Luke, who led the restoration of Plischke's Sutch house in Brooklyn, among many other projects - chooses 10 homes for our shortlist.

We visit each of those 10 homes in person, a week on the road that involves a lot of in-depth discussion about the pros and cons of each place. After those visits, we choose the winner and four finalists to feature in the Home of the Year issue. The winning architects get a $15,000 cash prize, thanks to the generosity of our partner in the awards, BMW.

Keep an eye out for the new issue of the magazine, containing heaps more about these fantastic homes. We're sending the last pages to the printers tomorrow.