John Scott bach

One of my favourite houses in our current issue is the bach that the late John Scott designed for Bruce and Estelle Martin and their family near Hokitika (that's the model on Scott's original drawings in the image above). My parents live near Bruce and Estelle's house in Hawkes Bay, also designed by John Scott, and we often visited and bought pottery from them when I was a child. For me, John Scott's work has a magical combination of modesty and confidence, a quiet cleverness that is abundantly evident in the bach, which was photographed by Paul McCredie. Here's a view of the exterior:

And this is the living area upstairs:

This is a favourite shot of mine that we couldn't squeeze into the layout in the magazine. It has a beautiful stillness to it. It was taken on the ground floor of the bach, looking towards the stairwell.

Bruce and Estelle's son Craig Martin helped us a lot in producing our story about the bach. He also has an excellent website featuring many of John Scott's other works, which you should check out if you're interested. It is www.johnscott.net.nz. It's a fantastic resource for anyone curious about this hugely accomplished New Zealand architect.

Welcome back

Happy New Year everyone. Here at HOME New Zealand, we've been back since Monday, putting the finishing touches on our annual 'Art Houses' issue, which will be published in the first week of February. It's turning out to be an eclectic lineup of homes, from an art-filled (and very glamorous) Auckland penthouse to an amazing series of marae on the Mahia Peninsula. We'll post more information here once we get the mag off to the printers.

In this issue, we'll also be calling for entries to the 2010 Home of the Year award. This year we'll again be partnering with BMW to bring you the award issue in August, an issue that's always a highlight of our publishing calendar. Interested architects and homeowners will be able to find the entry form in the magazine.

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.