Karl Maughan's studio

Artist Karl Maughan - whose paintings of exuberant gardens feature in some very important art collections around the world - creates his works in an exceptionally orderly studio/library in a converted garage at his Auckland home. Patrick Reynolds shot these images for our April/May2010 issue. They nicely capture Karl at work, as well as giving us a glimpse of his amazingly organised bookshelves.



In one corner of the room (seen in the image below), Karl has pinned several maps of the North Island together, a habit that began with a map of the Manawatu region where he grew up. The Chinese pagoda artwork is by James Kirkwood. Beside it, immediately beneath the map, is a work by Julian Dashper, with one of Karl's earlier works below that.

Karl has a particular enthusiasm for old children's books such as 'The Empire Annual for Boys'; his habit of collecting them began in the 1970s and has continued since, hence the bookshelves in his studio are stuffed with children's books published between 1850 and 1910.

He mixes his paints on a glass-topped table before applying them to his canvases. He didn't tidy the studio especially for the shoot - apparently it's always this neat.

The artist is in

Our new series of stories inside artists' studios was the brainchild of photographer Patrick Reynolds, who was inspired by his artist brother John's new studio, designed by Auckland architect Malcolm Walker. The studio is in the back yard of John's Grey Lynn villa, a mono-pitch structure that tilts up to clerestory windows admitting cool southerly light. Some of the shots below feature in our current issue of the magazine.

At the other end of the studio from the view above is the large window shown in the shots below, with its Mondrian-inspired pane of blue glass and a view out to the nikau palms John planted when he first purchased the villa about 20 years ago.

It looks like a big space in these photographs, but John has quickly filled it, and since begun panicking just a little about how to stop his habit for accumulating things from taking over what was briefly a rather pristine space. The views of the studio below show the polycarbonate wall that admits more light into the space.

And here's the artist, toiling in his studio. John says he does some of his best work in there at nights, when he relishes the convenience of being able to slip into the studio after dinner and not have to leave the family as he did when he would traipse back to his old studio in downtown Auckland. He's also excited about the possibilities a custom-built studio (and its large door, which can admit much more than the small canvases John has been working on recently) can open up for his art. "I think it will take years to full extract the value, to try things that I haven't because I haven't had the right kind of space," he says.

We'll feature more images from the studio series in upcoming posts. Not all of them will be architectural marvels like John's studio, but we don't mind that, as we're most interested in the way artists occupy and work in their spaces. Feel free to let us know which artist's spaces you'd like us to look into, and we can check them out.

Our new cover

Here's our June/July cover - a photograph of the lodge at Mountain Landing designed by Pip Cheshire. The photograph is by Patrick Reynolds. We hope we've captured a warm winter mood that will seduce thousands of potential readers into purchasing this issue. For any of you fretting about text legibility, the actual magazine features a more vivid fluoro orange that speaks much more loudly than this CMYK version.

The new issue is on newsstands from June 7.

Cheshire Architects at Northland's Mountain Landing

A sneak preview from our June/July issue, which will be on newsstands on June 7. In it, Pip Cheshire, the designer of this lodge/getaway at Mountain Landing in the Bay of Islands, ponders the question of bigness in residential architecture, and the consequent fear of botching a beautiful landscape with an architectural intervention. Here's an image of the lodge he designed, photographed by Patrick Reynolds - as you can see, the landscape around it is extraordinary and, in our opinion, the house is a suitably strong but respectful presence in it:


Mountain Landing is a private subdivision at the northern end of the Bay of Islands. Once a run-down farm, the developers have invested heavily in the creation of wetlands and vast new planted areas. This is a view of the house from down at the bay - it's one of the first homes to be built in the development.

And here's a view of the bay from the home's terrace:

In the magazine, we ask Pip if the prospect of building on such an amazing site was intimidating.

"Yes," he says. "The nervousness here stems from two aspects, that I might stuff up a great opportunity and a nice paddock and, more importantly, that the site is so loaded - high landscape and heritage values - that the building couldn’t blink, it needed to be strong without dominating."

We also asked about his decision to adopt a very different strategy from "touching the earth lightly", Glenn Murcutt's famous architectural dictum.

"I think that Murcutt line of touching the earth lightly is great and certainly fits Australia’s history and landscape," Pip says, "but we are a land of major earthworks, of trenches, palisades and ramparts. It's not a universal: I have some lighter projects but where its a big project, a big brief, then I guess I would usually dig in if there was some sort of slope."

You can read the full Q+A with Pip and the story he's written about the property in our next issue (it isn't often that architects are also authors - in Pip's case, his recent book Architecture Uncooked - so we took the opportunity to commission him to write about his own project for this issue). Keep an eye out for it on newsstands soon.

Michael O'Sullivan in Dwell

Michael O'Sullivan and Melissa Schollum's house in the Auckland suburb of Mangere Bridge - a finalist in last year's Home of the Year, the winner of a NZ Institute of Architects national award, and the winner of the inaugural BMW EfficientDynamics Sustainability Award - is featured in the latest issue of US-based Dwell magazine, with photographs by Patrick Reynolds. Congratulations from us to Michael on the international coverage of his great design.

Here's a link to the story on the Dwell site:

The Great Compression - Homes - Dwell

The '80s weren't so bad

We don't often get the opportunity to fly the flag for the 1980s, but in our latest issue we were pleased to. As many of you already know, the theme of this issue is 'Before & After'. The interesting thing about the renovation Julian Guthrie (of Godward Guthrie Architects) designed for this house on Auckland's Takapuna Beach was that in some ways, the original house didn't need too much altering. That was partly because it was designed in hte late 1980s by good architects in the first place: the Auckland firm of Mark-Brown, Fairhead, Sang and Carnachan. And it is partly because Julian's changes were so astute.

One of Julian's main interventions (apart from updating the kitchen and bathrooms) was the relocation of the stairway that connects the home's upper and lower levels. Here's what the hallway used to look like before the stairs were moved (the sloping site means you enter the home on the upper level, while the lower level connects with the garden and the path to the beach):

And below is one of Patrick Reynolds' photographs of it afterwards. Julian says moving the position of the stairs made the connection between the home's upper and lower levels much clearer, and also made it feel much easier to move between the two.

The transformation is particularly evident when viewed from the home's lower level. Here's the 'before' shot:

And here's the 'after'. Much better!

The treehouse

Some houses get the joy squeezed out of them during the arduous journey to being designed and built, but this house is not one of them. It is a house in Titirangi by Adam Mercer of Mercer & Mercer Architects, one that stretches exuberantly upwards from its bushy site to get sun and views that must be the envy of many a low-lying neighbour. We'll be featuring this house, photographed by Patrick Reynolds, in full in our April/May issue (out in the first week of April). In the meantime, here's a wee tease:

Tomorrow on TV3

Tomorrow on TV3's Sunrise we'll be featuring the McCahon houses in Auckland's Titirangi - the artists' residence designed by Pete Bossley and Andrea Bell, and the cottage that McCahon himself and his family owned in the early 1950s. Here's a view of the artists' residence, designed to snake its way through the trees. (The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.)


The artists' residence is administered by the McCahon House Trust, which selects the artists who, lucky things, to get reside and work there for three-month periods. The artists who have spent time there since it opened in 2007 include Judy Millar, Rohan Wealleans, Gavin Hipkins, James Robinson, Richard Lewer, Luise Fong, Eve Armstrong and Lisa Reihana. You can find out more information about the trust, its work and the artists it has hosted on its website, www.mccahonhouse.org.nz.

In the image below, you can see both the artists' residence and the original McCahon cottage, and how they relate to each other on the site. The original cottage is further down the hill, and while it's lovely in summer, it would have been very damp and gloomy in winter.

The restoration of the original McCahon house was managed by architect Graeme Burgess, while Rick Pearson designed the discreet displays that tell visitors about McCahon, his life and his work. I remember wanting to use this shot below of the kitchen (with its painting by McCahon on the cupboards) on our April/May 2007 cover, but then getting cold feet. I wish now that I'd been braver about it, not only because the image is one which would resonate with many New Zealanders, but because I think the house is a very eloquent building that tells us a lot about an aspect of our history. It's a place I always like to take overseas visitors to - even if they don't know McCahon, there's something about visiting the house that feels like a very authentic New Zealand experience.

And here's the exterior of the original (and very humble) cottage, with the artists' residence just discernable in the background. Tune into TV3 tomorrow around 8.40am to see more, or check the link on the website when we post it.

Patrick Reynolds on Public Address

Photographer and HOME New Zealand contributor Patrick Reynolds has a very eloquent rant about Auckland's urban planning woes on Public Address that is attracting plenty of comment. It's at this link if you'd like to check it out:

www.publicaddress.net/6418#post

One thing that jumped out at me in particular was this assertion of Patrick's:

"As a new world nation with lingering ideals of pioneering self-reliance we fancy the idea of building qua building. That is to say building as built, not thought. Built by proper men, the mythical 'good bloke', a type who now really only exists in beer advertisements, who can do anything, but of course would do nothing smartarse, which is to say: nothing smart".

This made me wonder if the architecture profession is sometimes guilty of underselling its own skills, or side-stepping open discussion of the intellectual rigour that is such a fundamental part of good architecture. I've often been surprised at how New Zealand architects, when discussing a building, so quickly fall into question-and-answer patterns relating to structure, the nuts and bolts of assembling a building rather than the thought process that went into the design. This is not to say that structure is not interesting, but it often seems like a roadbock in the way of a deeper discussion of a building's merits.

True, many architects also grasp at metaphors in a way that makes your eyes roll (partly because they often seem like self-conscious attempts to instill their buildings with some meaning), but there must still be a way to discuss architecture intelligently and approachably.

This is particularly relevant when you consider the sometimes-agonising coverage of the opening of the new Supreme Court in Wellington this week. Whether you admire the building or not, the media coverage made it clear that in general, we lack a vocabulary for articulating a clear response to new additions to our cityscape.

The villa

A little self-promotion here, but those of you who are interested in architecture may also be interested in the book Villa, which I worked on with Patrick Reynolds and Jeremy Salmond. In it, we've celebrated the adaptability and diversity of occupation of this uniquely New Zealand building form, visiting, photographing and writing about 20 villas from Dunedin to Hokianga. All the homes have been photographed by Patrick, who came up with the idea for the book after renovating his own villa, which is featured on our October/November cover. Here's the book cover if you're interested in looking out for it. The book is published by Random House, and I've vowed never to do another one at the same time as my full-time job.

The outtakes

One of the hardest parts about laying out house shoots is showing as much of the house as possible without the layouts getting repetitive. The good thing about having a blog is that we can show you some of Patrick Reynolds' amazing shots of the 2009 Home of the Year by Mitchell & Stout Architects that didn't make it into the final layout. This is one of the first views you get of the house from the bottom of the driveway -- it's a wonderfully intriguing object on the hill, inviting exploration:

The house faces the ocean, looking back towards Rangitoto and Auckland City:

Upstairs, little nest-like guest bedrooms are sheltered behind the cedar screens, which rest on gas struts and can be opened and closed with a long pole:

Below these, the master bedroom features an egg-yolk coloured ceiling specified by the architects, and a window that slides right back to allow access to the garden:

Patrick was a little disappointed that we didn't include his detail shots, so here are a couple. They're great, but we just couldn't squeeze them in. This one features the rear of the home, where the verandah roof points dramatically up the hill:

And this one shows a meeting of materials: the exterior cedar, the rusted window hood, and the bright yellow interior windowsill of the master bedroom:

There are plenty more shots where these came from. We'll post more of each of the finalist homes in the coming weeks. I'm on leave now until August 17, but will resume posting after that.

The silent object

One of our favourite shots from our April/May issue is a Patrick Reynolds classic: a beautiful cedar-screened home on the shores of Lake Taupo by Richard Goldie of Peddle Thorp Architects.

The home presents an impassive face to the neighbouring subdivision - this is the southerly elevation we're showing here, after all - but is surprisingly porous inside, with a generous front porch facing the lakd and a sunny courtyard in the centre. Goldie says the exterior cedar screen was inspired by the verticality of the vegetation in the area - there are lots of flaxes and grasses - as well as the orange shades of some local lichen. This shot of the home looking vaguely impenetrable also seems an appropriate response to what Goldie calls the "extraordinary brooding quality" of the lake.

Here's a shot looking back from the lake towards the home's front porch. All the screens are moveable, but Goldie says the idea is that they force people to sit down and relax to contemplate the view.

One of the nice things about focusing on 'Art Houses' in our current issue is that it gave us a good excuse to photograph the Auckland home of artist Stephen Bambury and his wife Jan.

The home was designed a decade ago by Pip Cheshire of Cheshire Architects (with assistance from Kendon McGraill); Stephen Bambury describes living there as "like living inside one of my paintings".

Indeed, Patrick Reynolds' photos of the house - those that I'm using in this post didn't make it into our article - beautifully capture the connections between Stephen's rigorous, meditative paintings and his home.

One of the best things about the house is its connection with its garden. Stephen has long been fascinated with the exquisite walled gardens of Suzhou, near Shanghai, where in more elegant times Beijing's leading civil servants retired to create beautiful calligraphy while (presumably) sipping tea and watching the seasons change.

(Some of these gardens are now World Heritage Sites - Suzhou is only an hour from Shanghai, so you should definitely visit if you're ever in the area. The UNESCO World Heritage Guide to Suzhou's gardens is at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/813).

The Bamburys' garden is as restrained and, in its own contemporary way, as pleasing as those in Suzhou. It is also a reminder that, in our view-obsessed nation, a small view of a garden on a constrained city site can be as pleasing as a massive coastal vista. To prove this point, some more of Patrick's shots:

To view more of Stephen Bambury's work: http://www.jensengallery.com/

To see more of Pip Cheshire's work (including Auckland's newly planned Q Theatre and the 'House at Takapuna Clifftop', one of our other favourites): http://www.cheshirearchitects.com/