Outtakes - Martin Poppelwell

Artist Martin Poppelwell's Napier studio was designed by Wellington-based architect Ashley Cox, and features in our current issue. These are some outtakes from Paul McCredie's shoot there. It's a rare luxury for an artist to be able to have a purpose-built studio - and although Martin's studio is too economical to be anywhere near indulgent, the light, space and view to the garden feel luxurious indeed.

The studio is in the garden of the property Martin owns on Napier Hill, which is also occupied by his small cottage. You can see how the buildings relate to each other in the image below.

The studio steps down in three stages, which Martin divides into thinking, production and dispatch areas. 

Here's the artist himself, taking in some of the late-afternoon sun.

This image shows the studio's skylights poking up above the corrugated iron boundary fence.



And here's the studio at twilight, with the cottage on the left of this image.

Outtakes: A favourite recent house

One of our favourite houses we've recently featured in our pages is a 1954 gem in Hamilton by architect Peter Middleton. It was the city's first architect-designed modernist house, a brave experiment in open-plan living. Heather Lomas, who with her husband Alan, commissioned Middleton to design the house, still lives there, and can therefore attest to the longevity of his design. All these photographs were taken by Paul McCredie. Here, Heather opens the door separating the living room from the kitchen and dining area, a device Middleton created in order to separate children and adults when necessary.

An elegant stone fireplace separates the living area from the library, up a couple of steps.

The image below shows the cedar-lined bedroom with a view out to the garden, which runs down to Lake Rotoroa. The shot below that shows the view of the house from the garden.

And the image below shows Heather herself sitting outside her house. After we sent her a copy of the magazine with her home in it, she sent us a lovely letter. Our favourite quote: "Paul McCredie's ruthless elimination of much of the clutter in the house for the photographs certainly paid off - they are excellent". (We should add that Paul is indeed one of our most skilled declutterers). Heather added that she was sorry that Peter Middleton is no longer alive to enjoy the appreciation of this house. We agree, but we also think it's a testament to his talent that his work has dated so beautifully, as enjoyable now as it was when it was first designed.

Outtakes

It's outtakes time again - this time we've selected extra shots of the house designed by Ken Crosson and Carolyn Gundy of Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects on the Kaipara Harbour that features in our October/November 2009 issue. It's never possible to show every aspect of a house without a magazine layout feeling repetitious - what we hope to convey is a sense of the essence of a house, and also to make our readers feel as if they've had a good look around. This house is big and made of many complex parts, so I think it's useful for us to show a few extra of Patrick Reynolds' images here.

This one shows the exterior as you arrive at the home and look towards the harbour. On this elevation of the house, the copper walls are windowless and impassive, lined with nikau palms.


Here's a view of the home's main living pavilion, sheltered from westerly winds by the hills behind.

In contrast to the huge volume of the main living area - which Ken likens to the inside of an upturned galleon - the bedrooms have lower ceilings and are more intimate, cosy spaces, although still lined in the same ply as the rest of the home. The headboard is made from macrocarpa and was designed by the architects.

This particularly good-looking shot - which it gave us great pains to leave out of our magazine layout - is a view from the deck outside the living pavilion, looking north to the master bedroom suite.