Outtakes: Pahoia house by Warren and Mahoney

Our April/May issue Home of the Year issue featured this finalist in the award, a magnificent home near Tauranga designed by Andrew Barclay and Richard McGowan of Warren & Mahoney.The home is a linear ground-floor arrangement of bedrooms and living areas, with a black main bedroom suite and study on the black upper floor, which is placed transversely to the main volume of the house. In the shot below (all the photographs are by Patrick Reynolds), you can see the house on its beautiful peninsula site.

The home's owners asked Andrew and Richard for a home with sculptural lines, a sense of restfulness, and a focus on quality and permanence. The house was to be "simple and strong and bold" for a life of "reading, privacy and quietness." The two shots below show more clearly the relationship of the upper and lower volumes of the home, with the upper floor projecting over and providing shade for a lower-level terrace.

All the home's main spaces face north, including the outdoor room (shown below), which features a reflecting pool with a large sculpture by Paul Dibble. It's the beautiful outcome of the owners' desire to emulate the European concept of entering a courtyard before moving into the house proper. It's also a way of encouraging sheltered outdoor living by dissolving the barriers between indoors and out. Visitors pass under the bridge-like form of the home's upper floor before walking through the front door, which opens directly into the outdoor room.

The outdoor room is anchored, like the rest of the house, by a wall of travertine that acts as the building's spine (below).

The view below looks back from the outdoor room to the home's main entrance, featuring another sculpture by Paul Dibble across the driveway. 

The owners wanted the home to feel equally comfortable when their six children were around or when just the two of them were home. The main living area, entered from the outdoor room, is an intimate open-plan sequence of sunny sitting area, a kitchen and dining space and a compact formal sitting room with a fireplace.

When the (mostly adult) children are visiting, they have the home's west wing, with three bedrooms and a small living room. At the eastern end of the ground floor is a separate guest suite featuring this elegant ensuite bathroom.

Upstairs, a dark-painted library located behind the main bedroom makes for a comfortable winter evening retreat.

The view below is from the guest suite on the ground floor, a lovely perspective looking north over the estuary. Thanks again to our Home of the Year partner, Altherm Window Systems, for working with us to present these fantastic homes.

Our five 2012 Home of the Year finalists

All the shoots of the finalists in our 2012 Home of the Year are now in and being laid out, so we wanted to share these sneak peeks of our five finalists in the award with you. You'll be able to see all five homes in our lavish Home of the Year 2012 issue, on newsstands April 2.

So, in no particular order: this little bach is by Ken Crosson of Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects, and is on Whangapoua Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula. The photo is by Jackie Meiring.

Another bach on the Coromandel Peninsula, this one at Onemana, a low-budget beauty designed and built by Dave Strachan of SGA Architects and Dave's students at the Unitec School of Architecture. If we were architecture students, we'd be stoked to have our first-ever creation named as a Home of the Year finalist. The photo is by Simon Devitt.

This home by Warren & Mahoney is on a beautiful peninsula just north of Tauranga. The photo is by Patrick Reynolds.

This home in an abundant garden near Wellington is by Alistair Luke, of Jasmax. The photo is by Paul McCredie.

Last but not least, this home at Piha is by Herbst Architects. The photo is by Patrick Reynolds.



And the finalists are...

Brian MacKay-Lyons and his wife Marilyn are on the plane back to Canada, and the Home of the Year judges have made their decisions. So, we're very pleased to annouce the finalists in our Home of the Year award 2012.

The winner will be announced at a cocktail function in Auckland on March 29, and the results published in our April/May issue, which is on sale from April 2.

In the meantime, we're busy getting our five very exciting finalists photographed to feature in our Home of the Year issue. (For those of you who can't wait, you can see amateur pics from our judging trip on our Facebook page or Twitter feed - just click on the Twitter box on the right-hand side of this page).

Anyway, the five finalists in the award (in no particular order) are:

• A home near Wellington by Jasmax
• A home at Pahoia, near Tauranga, by Warren & Mahoney
• A holiday home at Piha by Herbst Architects
• A bach at Onemana on the Coromandel Peninsula by Strachan Group Architects in conjunction with Unitec students
• A bach at Whangapoua on the Coromandel Peninsula by Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects.

We're really looking forward to publishing our Home of the Year issue and showing you how good these five homes are. Thanks to our Home of the Year partner Altherm Window Systems for making this all possible.

My Favourite Building - Vita Cochran

We like Christchurch textile artist Vita Cochran (and her work) so we knew she was a good candidate to choose a building for our 'My Favourite Building' page. And she did - choosing not a wreckage, but a building that symbolises Christchurch's modern, progressive side and embodies the city's post-earthquake determination: The New Brighton Library, designed by Warren & Mahoney. The photograph is by Stephen Goodenough.

Here's what Vita wrote for us about the building:

"I love this building because of its inspired siting: a wonderful modern library, a building with personality, in the sandhills of New Brighton beach. It's elliptical and aerodynamic, nautical without being heavy-handed, with a roof like folded insect wings and sunshades on one face which suggest paper kites. In winter you can sit in a window seat with a pile of books and look out at the waves crashing just metres away, while being sheltered from the freezing easterly. In summer you can get your magazines out and read them on the beach.

"I love that the building is unashamedly modern yet it sits easily with the 1934 clock tower at its Western entrance. It embraces the wonderful windswept Monterey Cypress on its north side and it doesn't overpower the sand-blasted, salt-coated scruffy charm of the rest of New Brighton. It is welcoming, always busy. A small sign asks you remove sandy towels and beach gear before entering; otherwise it just lets you get on and enjoy it. Happily, though it is in the city's damaged eastern suburbs, the library came through the earthquakes with only minor cosmetic damage. It was soon open to the public again with its shelves full beyond capacity, carrying material from other quake-damaged Christchurch libraries which remain closed."

Christchurch damage

Our friends at the blog Christchurch Modern are compiling a list of classic Warren & Mahoney buildings that have been damaged in the earthquake there. Sad reading. These houses are an important part of Christchurch's (and New Zealand's) architectural history, so we hope at least some of them can be added to the preservation list.

Miles: A Life in Architecture

We know we're biased, because we're one of the sponsors of the exhibhtion, but we thoroughly recommend you visit the Christchurch Art Gallery to see the excellent show 'Miles: A Life in Architecture', featuring the work of Sir Miles Warren of the Christchurch (and now national) firm of Warren & Mahoney.

Art institutions are understandably skittish about architecture exhibitions. The best way to experience architecture, of course, is to be in a building. While we agree with this, we also believe that experiencing a building through photographs is a worthy stand-in for the real thing. At the exhibition, the excellent photographs of Warren & Mahoney buildings are combined with plans, helpful information panels and Sir Miles' beautiful watercolours of his buildings.

Sir Miles has also recently published an autobiography with the Canterbury University Press - we feature an excerpt in our current issue. It's a lively read, especially the part about how proud he was of the early notoriety of his Dorset Street flats, which were described soon after their completion as one of the ugliest buildings in Christchurch. Our article features some of Paul McCredie's photographs of the flats. The passing of time has shown them, in our opinon, to be anything but ugly:

One of the striking things about the exhibition is the awareness it promotes of the great architectural legacy of Warren & Mahoney, which has given New Zealand some of its most beautiful modernist buildings. Take the chance if you're in Christchurch to see the show and, if you have time, drop by the Christchurch Town Hall, one of the firm's masterworks. It is as elegant and seductive today as it was when it opened in the early 1970s.