New Home Design

Our new cover is on newsstands today - the beautifully crafted home on it is by Michael O'Sullivan, the photograph is by Emily Andrews, and the shot was styled by Yvette Jay. 

 Inside the issue is an abundance of great stuff, including homes by Wellington's Tennent + Brown Architects, Atelierworkshop, Christchurch's Wilson & Hill and Auckland's Andrew Patterson, as well as our former art director Miranda Dempster's New York apartment and a beautiful cabin built by expat New Zealander Adrian van Schie in New York State's Adirondacks Mountains. 

Also! We present our biannual bathroom design focus, travel to six chic global destinations, design writer Douglas Lloyd Jenkins tells a tale of the rebirth of a sleek mid-century hotel in Putaruru, we feature Kate Sylvester and Douglas + Bec's new furniture range, and much more.

Outtakes: The Onemana Bach by SGA Architects and Unitec students

Our current issue features a short Q+A with architect Dave Strachan of SGA Architects, talking to him about his work with students at Unitec to design and build social housing in collaboration with Auckland's VisionWest.

This isn't the first time Dave and his students have worked together to build something remarkable - last year he and his team designed and built a thrifty bach at Onemana Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula that was a finalist in our 2012 Home of the Year award. (These photographs are by Simon Devitt).

Dave and his students at Auckland’s Unitec School of Architecture were assisted on this project by architect Marshall Cook and builder John Cocks. As a result, all of these students can claim they will leave university with real-world architectural experience: as well as collaborating on the design of the bach, they built it at the Unitec campus before it was trucked to its site on the Coromandel Peninsula.

This is a good point at which to add contdxt to Dave’s remark in our original article accompanying the Home of the Year issue. In it, we quoted Dave as making an unflattering remark about architects in general, but what he was really trying to say was that there is a perception that architects are regarded this way, and that the way students work with tradespeople in this exercise helps to close the gap between architects and the professionals they collaborate with. Our apologies to Dave for allowing this remark to run in the magazine in a way that made it seem like he was slagging off his own profession, when in reality he holds architects and architecture in the highest esteem. 

 

Above: Andrew Morrison relaxes on the deck in a cane-swing chair while Shiree and their daughters Rubie and Billie hang 

out in the kitchen. Morgan Cronin from Cronin Kitchens advised the students on building the cabinetry.

Above: The living room opens out to decks on both sides. Former Unitec student 
Tim Webber designed the table to match the Morrisons' Ikea chairs.

Part of Dave’s mission in leading this project at Unitec is to encourage productive working relationships and good communication between these students when they graduate and the tradespeople they will work with on future architectural projects. Building the bach was a vital part of this process. The students, Dave says, might say, “oh, we just want a nice flat floor to go through there – well that’s wonderful, but how the hell do you do that, to document it and then build it? That makes it a useful part of architectural education”.

Dave was a builder before he became an architect and has the deepest of respect for both professions, as well as a keen awareness of how poor detailing and communication can compromise a project. “Design is what [students] are taught to do,” Dave says. “It’s what most schools of architecture focus on. But a lot of design decisions are made during documentation – everyone thinks it’s the boring bit, but really it’s very much about trying to keep the integrity of the design idea you had at the start.”

Above: The ultimate in indoor/outdoor flow: a floor that continues almost seamlessly from the kitchen out to the deck. 
The deck chairs, covered by Shiree, are from Nest.

Above: A view of the dining area opening onto the second deck. In the background, the barbecue from 
The BBQ Factory echoes the strobe-like effect from the slatted roof.

Above: The barbecue deck is also the perfect place to relax in front of a little fire and watch the starry sky after sunset.

Above: Billie and Rubie playing in the living area with the windows panels drawn back to enjoy the sun. 
Below: Dave and some of the members of Studio 19, his student design team.

Our new cover(s)

A small innovation with this, our June/July issue: because we have three South Island houses in the issue (which is relatively rare, and very welcome), we decided to do a special South Island cover to highlight this fact for our mainland readers.

The house on the South Island cover is in the Marlborough Sounds, and was designed by Gerald Parsonson (whose work is also on the current cover of the US architecture magazine Dwell - read more about that in an earlier post here). The photograph is by Paul McCredie. (The other South Island houses in this issue include a Wanaka collaboration between California's Marmol Radziner and Wellington's Herriot + Melhuish Architects, and a house near Arrowtown by Bergendy Cooke).

Meanwhile, North Islanders get to feast their eyes on a photograph of the home of Davor and Abbe Popadich (and their son August), taken by Simon Devitt. The miracle of this house is that such a comfortable and interesting space was created for such a low cost - just $246,000 to build the whole house. You can read more about it in our new issue, on newsstands Monday June 6. Comments on which cover you prefer, and the split-cover approach in general, are very welcome - we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Outtakes - Ian Athfield in Nelson

Architect Ian Athfield doesn't do many houses - these days, his time is mostly occupied with larger projects such as stadiums and apartment towers. But that doesn't mean he's lost his touch: here at Mapua, near Nelson, he has created a fascinating home for Halfdan Hansen and Juliette Fox and their two daughters. The house is featured in our current issue, but we wanted to share some of Simon Devitt's shots of it here that we couldn't fit in our article.

Halfdan told Ath, as he's known, that he wanted a long, villa-like corridor. Ath delivered a more dramatic version of it, with a low, dark ceiling and dark floor. It creates a great feeling of compression when you're in it, making the light-filled spaces off it seem even more compelling.

As you travel down the hallway, every new space comes as a complete surprise. You can see this fishpond (above) out a small window from the hallway. The view below is from Juliette's studio across the pond to the main bedroom.

And this is the view of the house from the street (below), a mysterious object that almost demands to be explored. We hope the coverage of the house in our current issue is enough to satisfy the curious. We thank Juliette and Halfdan for their generosity in allowing us to publish the house, and applaud the creativity and inventiveness of their architect.

Outtakes - Ian Athfield in Nelson

Architect Ian Athfield doesn't do many houses - these days, his time is mostly occupied with larger projects such as stadiums and apartment towers. But that doesn't mean he's lost his touch: here at Mapua, near Nelson, he has created a fascinating home for Halfdan Hansen and Juliette Fox and their two daughters. The house is featured in our current issue, but we wanted to share some of Simon Devitt's shots of it here that we couldn't fit in our article.

Halfdan told Ath, as he's known, that he wanted a long, villa-like corridor. Ath delivered a more dramatic version of it, with a low, dark ceiling and dark floor. It creates a great feeling of compression when you're in it, making the light-filled spaces off it seem even more compelling.

As you travel down the hallway, every new space comes as a complete surprise. You can see this fishpond (above) out a small window from the hallway. The view below is from Juliette's studio across the pond to the main bedroom.

And this is the view of the house from the street (below), a mysterious object that almost demands to be explored. We hope the coverage of the house in our current issue is enough to satisfy the curious. We thank Juliette and Halfdan for their generosity in allowing us to publish the house, and applaud the creativity and inventiveness of their architect.

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...

Ivan Juriss house

We've received a lot of appreciative emails about our feature on the 1961 house by Ivan Juriss that features in our current issue. Despite being a very fine piece of architecture, the publicity-shy Juriss had never arranged for it to be published before. Although it features in our 'Before and After' issue, one of the best things about it is that it hasn't been altered at all. It was so good in the first place it's hard to imagine it needing any changes.

We received a tip-off about the home's existence from Julia Gatley, a lecturer at the School of Architecture at the University of Auckland who is writing a book about the influential Group Architects, of whom Juriss was a member.

The house has new owners who haven't yet furnished it, but they generously agreed to let us photograph it anyway. We called interior designer Katie Lockhart and asked her to help style the shoot with furniture from the period (thanks to Auckland's Art & Industry for supplying many of these beautiful pieces).

Simon Devitt took the photographs. In this one, you can see Juriss' clever manipulation of space, with the largely open-plan living area divided into zones with different levels and, therefore, entirely different moods. The dining area in this photo, for example, is a few steps down from a sitting zone, a gesture which makes the ceiling height appear to soar when you're at the table:

Tucked around the corner is a snug sitting area, separated from the open-plan space not by walls, but by the brick chimney. The ceiling plane ducks lower over this space, creating a much more intimate mood.

Overall, the house is a beautifully balanced composition of spaces with different moods and outlooks. Even though it was a relatively large house for its time, it is compact compared to the homes that now occupy coastal sites like it (the house is in the Auckland suburb of Glendowie), and has an efficient plan which delivers a great variety of interior and exterior experiences. One of our favourite rooms is the kitchen, with its continuation of the beautiful layering of timbers that characterises the rest of the house. Thankfully it too has been spared the indignity of an unsympathetic renovation.

More outtakes

More outtakes from our current issue: this time, the house on Great Barrier Island designed by Paul Clarke of Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects. The photographs are by Simon Devitt.

This one shows the house's open-air (but covered) corridor. On the left is a storage cupboard, a small laundry alcove, and a toilet. The bedrooms are on the right, with the main living area at the end of the corridor. The open-air corridor may make for a slightly chilly trip to the bathroom in winter, but Paul believes that it's important to remain connected to the elements at a holiday home, something the owners heartily agree with.

This arresting view looks along the home's eastern flank, showing its cedar exoskeleton.

Here's a view of it in its bush-clad setting, in a field a little back from Medlands Beach. This is like the view you get of the house when you approach - it's an intriguing object from the driveway, with its monopitch roof pointing optimistically skywards.

Paul Clarke wished we had included this shot in our layout, so I've put it here for him. He likes the way the home's exoskeleton mimics the verticality of the trees.

And this is another view through the home's deck and living area.