World Architecture Festival - the NZ finalists

New Zealand architects have made a fantastically strong showing in the shortlist of nominees for awards at the World Architecture Festival.

First, with an impressive three nominations (and one shared one) are these projects from Fearon Hay Architects: The Brancott Estate Heritage Centre in Marlborough (below), shortlisted in the  'Display' category of the festival and featured in our December/January 2012 issue. The photo below is by Patrick Reynolds.

 

Fearon Hay's Imperial Lane project in Auckland (below), featured in our February/March issue, picked up a nomination in the festival's 'Old and New' category. Photo by Patrick Reynolds.

Jeff Fearon and Tim Hay are going to have a very busy time of it when they present shortlisted projects to the judges at the festival in Singapore in October: their Island Retreat (below), featured in our current issue, has been shortlisted in the 'Villa' category of the awards. 

And the firm was also nominated in the urban design category, along with Taylor Cullity Lethlean of Melbourne, for their excellent work at Auckland's North Wharf (below). Both photos by Patrick Reynolds.

   

In non-Fearon Hay nominations, Ken Crosson of Crosson Clarke Carnachan's Hut on Sleds at Whangapoua Beach (below), a finalist in our Home of the Year award 2012, is shortlisted in the festival's 'Villa' category. Photo by Jackie Meiring. 

Patterson Associates' Geyser building (below) on Auckland's Parnell Road is nominated in the festival's 'Office' category. 

As we mentioned earlier in the week, RTA Studio's C3 house (below, which is planned, but not yet built) has picked up a nomination in the 'Future Projects' section.

Also in 'Future Projects' a planned Waikato Whanau Ora centre (below) by Hamish Monk, Aaron Paterson and Dominic Glamuzina of The Flood.

All the finalists will travel to the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in October to give presentations about their work to a panel of judges. We wish them luck, and congratulate them on their success in getting this far. 

The full World Architecture Festival shortlist is here.

Outtakes: Waiheke Island holiday home

In our current issue, the Waiheke Island house by Fearon Hay Architects (photographed by Patrick Reynolds) creates a powerful paradox between a camping experience, with all the outdoors roughness it implies, and the luxurious elegance of a holiday home, to resolve it in a striking chef-d’oeuvre.

At first sight, to reach for tent and camping metaphors in an expensive holiday home seems to flirt with absurdity. But here, the house and the environment enhance themselves in beautiful contrasts. If you set the luxury trappings aside, there is still something fundamentally camp-like about the experience of being in the home. 

In the living pavilion, light flows freely through the space thanks to the fixed floor-to-ceiling panel windows that make up an entire wall. On the other side, glass doors open to blur the space with the lawn outside.

The pavilions are separated from each other, demanding a physical engagement with the outdoors – be it to feel the wind or get a little wet on your way to bed!

In the empty central space that makes for an outdoor gathering point, the home’s owners gather around a brazier in the evenings. “We thought, if you set up a camp here, this is where you’d put your fire” says Tim Hay of Fearon Hay Architects.

The encampment-like arrangement of the house was designed so it nestles into the topography. Says Tim: “There was a strong sense of a centre on the site, like a crater, and we didn’t want to disturb that.” That’s why they designed the pavilions to open inwards to the courtyard, the empty space at the heart of this remarkable home. On the other side of the courtyard is a living area containing a TV.

This bowl-like shape of the land surrounding the property is made clear in this view through the main living pavilion.

 

The encampment setting heightens the sense of luxury of having a roof on your head. Roughness and refinement merge into each other. In the ensuite bathroom, designed by Tim’s sister Penny of Penny Hay Interiors, white curtains run on a continuous track around the room, allowing it to be turned into a cocoon-like space.

An overhead skylight in the ensuite bathroom allows light to spill down the wall.

“We were keen that [the house] had an expression of materiality that wasn’t too perfect or polished,” Tim says, so they chose a roughcast plaster finish for the house nicely offset by the smooth sheen of the perforated metal screens.

This house ultimately gives you the feeling to be both surrounded by nature and still nestled in comfort.

From the courtyard, a small aperture between the bedrooms allows a glimpse of the view to the west, taking in Rangitoto and the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.

Our new cover

Our new cover is a photograph by Patrick Reynolds of architect Sir Miles Warren's amazing home and garden, Ohinetahi, on Banks Peninsula. The home was substantially damaged in the September 2010 Canterbury earthquake, but has now been rebuilt in a slightly different form. You can read Finlay Macdonald's in-depth interview with Sir Miles about his home and Christchurch's post-quake future in the magazine, on newsstands Monday June 4. 

Other exhilarating, beautiful, drool-worthy content in this issue includes:

• Our 2012 furniture and homeware Design Awards winner and finalists.
• Auckland architect Jack McKinney's remarkable villa transformation.
• A new Queenstown getaway by Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr of Kerr Ritchie Architects.
• A major feature on architect Ian Athfield by Julia Gatley, coinciding with the upcoming launch of Julia's new book on Athfield Architects, as well as lavish coverage of Ath's remarkable, crumbling, inspiring Wellington home by Patrick Reynolds.
• New Zealand architect William Tozer's sleek, gritty design for a new apartment in an old London factory building. 
•  A fantastic encampment,style holiday home on Waiheke Island by Fearon Hay Architects.
• Much more, including interviews with Pete Bossley, Tanu Gago, Katie Lockhart, Martin Brown and others...

On film: Home of the Year 2012

Welcome to the Home of the Year 2012 by Herbst Architects, filmed by Jeremy Toth (with still photography by Patrick Reynolds) and edited by Dean Foster (clever Renaissance man Dean also composed the music). Congratulations to Lance and Nicola and all our award finalists. Our Home of the Year issue, featuring much more coverage of this home and our four fantastic finalists, is on newsstands from Monday April 2.

And the winner is...

We're delighted to announce that the winner of the Home of the Year 2012 is 'Under Pohutukawa,' a holiday home at Piha by Lance and Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects. You can see images of this amazing home and the four incredible finalists in the award in our new issue, which will be on newsstands on Monday April 2.

The cover shot was taken by Patrick Reynolds, as was the image of the home below. We've also made a short web film of the home which we'll be uploading soon. Thanks again to our Home of the Year partner, Altherm Window Systems, for their ongoing support of the award.

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!

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.

Outtakes - Godward Guthrie in Omaha

The home on the cover of our December/January issue by Julian Guthrie of Godward Guthrie Architects is an exercise in blurring boundaries between inside and out. While the whole idea of 'indoor outdoor' flow has become a titanic cliche, this is a house that makes it still seem like a noble aim. An array of screens, doors and glass panels can be configured to make the house feel connected to the beach no matter what the weather. Here's a view of the house from the beach, with the main living area on the upper floor. All the photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.


The home's living area opens onto terraces on its northern and western sides. An exterior staircase behind the screen in the picture above leads from the living area down to the lawn.

This view (below) from the street shows how the doors of the hallway can be opened onto the pool area (the hallway is also a very effective collector of solar heat in winter). At left on the upper floor is the terrace, which can be sheltered from the wind with moveable glass screens.

Below is a view from the sheltered pool area towards the beach. The rumpus room downstairs can be fully opened up to the weather, or closed down behind glass doors and cedar screens. In this photograph, it reads as a totally outdoor space.

We like: Sunday Painters restaurant

You just can't help but love Sunday Painters restaurant in Auckland's Ponsonby, which featured in our October issue. It opened earlier this year, complete with a whimsical interior that features a mural by James Kirkwood, one of the restaurant's owners. (We should add at this point that the French-style food is very good, too, as is the service).


The name Sunday Painters comes from the occasional dinners James and his co-owners Esther Lamb and Isobel Thom liked to throw for their art-school friends in RSA Halls around Auckland. The old halls didn't allow for decorative schemes as lavish as this.

Among the Cubist artworks on the walls are these plates, made and hand-painted by Isobel, an artist who also runs the Sunday Painters kitchen. We've always been suckers for a bit of Willow pattern, and think Isobel's take on it is fantastic.

The restaurant is at 185 Ponsonby Road - we highly recommend you visit, but book beforehand as it has been very popular. The number is 09 360 2001. These photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.

We like: Home Work (subscribe to HOME and get a free copy)

We like Home Work, a new book that invites readers inside the homes of twenty New Zealand architects - the rules being that the architects must have designed their homes themselves and still be living in them.

It's a fantastically eclectic selection of houses, from 1950s classics to contemporary extravaganzas such as Neville Price's Northland home on the cover. (We've run an excerpt from the book about Tony Watkins' house at Auckland's Karaka Bay in our current issue).

The photographs, we're proud to say, are by HOME New Zealand contributor Patrick Reynolds, with erudite text and informative interviews with the architects by John Walsh, editor of Architecture NZ.

The good news is that if you subscribe now (or renew your subscription) to HOME New Zealand, you'll get a copy of Home Work (worth $75) absolutely free. You can do so by visiting www.magshop.co.nz/home. An ideal Christmas gift, we suggest? You can give somebody a subscription and keep Home Work for yourself...

Our new cover

The cover of our December/January 2011 issue, which will be on newsstands on November 22, features of a photograph by Patrick Reynolds of a house by Julian Guthrie at Omaha, north of Auckland. This is our annual issue featuring coastal homes, so we wanted a cover that shouted 'summer!'. Hopefully this does the trick. Thanks to Julian for letting us know about this excellent house, for the Couillault family for being so helpful with our shoot, and of course to Patrick for the great shot.

David Mitchell & Julie Stout's studio

As promised earlier (and our apologies for this being a promise we've been slow to deliver on), here are some extra shots of David Mitchell and Julie Stout's studio, which is adjacent to their new house on Auckland's North Shore. The house was the subject of an earlier post, but as the studio is an intriguing structure in its own right, we wanted to share more of Patrick Reynolds' photos of it here.

David and Julie had the studio built before their house, and lived in it while the house went up on the site behind them. They liked the 19th century idea of garden follies, so designed a contemporary version for themselves. In the image below, you can see why some passersby thought the roof had slid off after construction was finished:


Now, the flaxes are flourishing on the roof garden, which makes for a great hangout for tui and a pleasant addition to the view from David and Julie's bathroom, on the third floor of the big house. In the shot below, you can see the inside of the studio, filled with light playing over the honeyed tones of the plywood linings.

The small kitchen is located underneath the mezzanine bedroom:


At one end of the kitchen, a small cutout in the cast concrete walls allows a glimpse of the shallow pool that surrounds much of the house, reflecting dappled patterns of light inside during the day.


Julie says the railings on the mezzanine floor make the world's best drying rack.


Upstairs, a tiny bathroom is tucked behind a glass partition beside the bed. This is a very small space, but its complexity and warmth make it easy to imagine living there, at least for a while. At the moment, Julie and David use it as a space for guests, but it could also be adapted to become a space for working from home, or rented out if necessary ... David and Julie both like the idea of the house being easily adapted to fit their future needs, or those of people who might eventually live in it after they're gone.

Daniel Marshall's other Waiheke house

Many of you who have the Home of the Year issue will already know this, but architect Daniel Marshall has two homes among this year's Home of the Year finalists, both of them on Waiheke Island. We featured one of the homes, at the eastern end of the island, in an earlier post. Let's now take a walk around the outside of the other one, on the island's northern slopes.

As you can see, the vista isn't at all bad. Daniel's response to it combines openness and solidity, with the house anchored firmly to the ground on one side and appearing to float over the Hauraki Gulf on the other. (These photographs are all by Patrick Reynolds). Both the following views from behind the house show the more closed-off, southerly elevation.


As we get closer to the house from the south, you can get a clearer idea of how it is hunkered in beside a small hill to the west.

The view below is from the east, which also shows how the house is protected a little by the hill on its westerly side.

Here, also looking from the east, you can see the strong south-facing wall that imparts a sense of solidity to the home's otherwise glassy interior. At the left of this image, you can see the stone wall that splays out across the driveway, directly visitors up stairs to the house (the garage is buried under the side of the house you can see in this image).

In our next post, we'll take you for a wander around the interior, as well as the courtyards Daniel designed to provide sheltered outdoor seating options on windy days.

Mitchell & Stout on the North Shore

David Mitchell & Julie Stout's home on Auckland's North Shore is a complex beast, so let's take a slow tour of the exterior, courtesy of our photographer Patrick Reynolds. Here's a view of the house from the street, looking up at the top-floor terrace:

This is a view of the main entrance, sheltered by a large polycarbonate sheet that sends rainwater into the half-pipe you can see in this shot. In rainstorms, the water rockets along it towards the tank:

The polycarbonate sheet in the shot below serves the purpose of lending privacy to the kitchen, without diminishing the amount of light that gets in there. You can see the lower slopes of Rangitoto in the distance in this shot, as well as the home's 'moat' with water lilies.

And here's another view of the 'moat', this time looking from between the house and the garden studio, which sits at a slightly offset angle to it. At some times of the day, the sunlight reflecting off the water creates a lovely quality of light inside the ground-floor flat occupied by Julie's mother.

This view is of the ramp leading from the garden to what Julie and David call the 'back' door of the house, which opens into the kitchen and dining area.

Come back and visit the blog next week and we'll take you for a few more photo tours, including David and Julie's garden studio, and some of the other Home of the Year houses.

Home of the Year finalists

A little tease: here, we present to you an image of each of the finalists in this year's Home of the Year award. They're presented in no particular order - and remember, you have to hang on a while until we announce the winner on the evening of Thursday July 29.

We'll post news of the winner on this site that night, and it will also be announced on TV3's Campbell Live. HOME New Zealand's Home of the Year issue goes on sale August 2.

Thanks to our partners BMW - who admire good design as much as we do - the winning architects receive a $15,000 cash prize, making this New Zealand's richest architectural award.

This year we have six finalists. Unusually, two architects have two finalists each. The first of these is Daniel Marshall, who designed two houses on Waiheke Island. This one (shown below) is nestled in a bay at the island's eastern end, and was photographed by Simon Devitt.

And this one is on the northern side of the island, and was photographed by Patrick Reynolds.

The winners of last year's Home of the Year award, David Mitchell and Julie Stout of Mitchell & Stout Architects, have their own Auckland home (below) in this year's lineup of finalists. It was photographed by Patrick Reynolds.

Stevens Lawson Architects also have two homes in the finals. Both were photographed by Mark Smith. This one is a home on the shores of Lake Wanaka:

And this one is a home in east Auckland:

Finally, this home in Arrowtown was designed by Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr of Queenstown's Kerr Ritchie Architects. It was photographed by Paul McCredie.

Which one do you think should win? Feedback is welcome...