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.

Meet the Designers at Corporate Culture

Auckland design fans, take note: Our friends at Corporate Culture are inviting HOME readers to a very special 'Meet the Designers' event next Wednesday 18 July from 6-8pm at the Corporate Culture showroom (73 The Strand, Parnell).

You'll ...hear designers Nathan Goldsworthy, Emma Hayes, Tim Webber and Christopher Johnson speak about their latest work. Emma and Tim were finalists in this year's HOME Design Awards, and Nathan has been a finalist on a number of occasions before. Entry to the talks is free.

Entry to the talks if free. If you're keen to attend, please RSVP to Christine Lawton, christine@corporateculture.co.nz. It's going to be an enjoyable and informative evening!

Above: The 'Adjutant' table by Nathan Goldsworthy, from our Design Awards 2011. Photograph by Toaki Okano, styling by Jessica Allen and Tanya Wong.

Designer Emma Hayes' 'River Print' fabric series (above) was a finalist in our 2012 Design Awards, as was Tim Webber's series of 'Y' stools (below). Both photographs by Toaki Okano, with styling by Juliette Wanty and Alicia Menzies. 

Outtakes: Waiheke Island holiday home

In our current issue, the Waiheke Island house by Fearon Hay Architects (photographed by Patrick Reynolds) creates a powerful paradox between a camping experience, with all the outdoors roughness it implies, and the luxurious elegance of a holiday home, to resolve it in a striking chef-d’oeuvre.

At first sight, to reach for tent and camping metaphors in an expensive holiday home seems to flirt with absurdity. But here, the house and the environment enhance themselves in beautiful contrasts. If you set the luxury trappings aside, there is still something fundamentally camp-like about the experience of being in the home. 

In the living pavilion, light flows freely through the space thanks to the fixed floor-to-ceiling panel windows that make up an entire wall. On the other side, glass doors open to blur the space with the lawn outside.

The pavilions are separated from each other, demanding a physical engagement with the outdoors – be it to feel the wind or get a little wet on your way to bed!

In the empty central space that makes for an outdoor gathering point, the home’s owners gather around a brazier in the evenings. “We thought, if you set up a camp here, this is where you’d put your fire” says Tim Hay of Fearon Hay Architects.

The encampment-like arrangement of the house was designed so it nestles into the topography. Says Tim: “There was a strong sense of a centre on the site, like a crater, and we didn’t want to disturb that.” That’s why they designed the pavilions to open inwards to the courtyard, the empty space at the heart of this remarkable home. On the other side of the courtyard is a living area containing a TV.

This bowl-like shape of the land surrounding the property is made clear in this view through the main living pavilion.

 

The encampment setting heightens the sense of luxury of having a roof on your head. Roughness and refinement merge into each other. In the ensuite bathroom, designed by Tim’s sister Penny of Penny Hay Interiors, white curtains run on a continuous track around the room, allowing it to be turned into a cocoon-like space.

An overhead skylight in the ensuite bathroom allows light to spill down the wall.

“We were keen that [the house] had an expression of materiality that wasn’t too perfect or polished,” Tim says, so they chose a roughcast plaster finish for the house nicely offset by the smooth sheen of the perforated metal screens.

This house ultimately gives you the feeling to be both surrounded by nature and still nestled in comfort.

From the courtyard, a small aperture between the bedrooms allows a glimpse of the view to the west, taking in Rangitoto and the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.