More fashion and architecture

More fashion and architecture collaborations, this time between Miuccia Prada and OMA's Rem Koolhaas, who designed 'The Transformer', a temporary performance and exhibition space in Seoul. I keep accidentally calling it the Hadron collider, because it looks as it it's about to do something atomic.

Koolhaas, of course, also designed Prada's New York and Los Angeles stores. There's more about the Transformer on Wallpaper's site, at this link: http://www.wallpaper.com/fashion/prada-transformer-seoul/3284

Fashion and architecture and the great buildings they produce

Thinking about fashion and architecture, as we do in our latest issue, brought to mind the number of great buildings produced by the melding of these two creative disciplines. A personal favourite is SANAA's Dior store on Omotesando in Tokyo, an ethereal creation that looks as beautiful by night as it does by day.

One of the nicest things about this building is its scale. In the west, we tend to think of great architects designing tall buildings or museums or other such monoliths, yet Omotesando in particular is full of smaller creations by great architects, little architectural jewel boxes whose small scale makes them all the more magical.

Shigeru Ban

In Auckland last week, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban gave a talk to a capacity crowd in the Auckland Town Hall. Ban is best-known for his work using cardboard tubes as a building material in everything from refugee shelters to glamorous Expo pavilions, but one of my favourite pieces he showed was his 'Curtain Wall house' in Tokyo, which replaces the architectural version of a curtain wall with, quite literally, curtains. It's witty but also extremely beautiful.


Currently under construction: the much weirder outpost of the Pompidou Centre in Metz, France, scheduled for completion later this year.

Fashion and architecture

You may or may not care, but this week is Fashion Week, so here at ACP headquarters (the home of Fashion Quarterly, and other fashion-obsessed magazines) there has been a great kerfuffle about who's scored tickets to which designer's show, and so on.

Here at HOME New Zealand, we cannot claim to be above the fray. In our next issue, which we're just sending to the printers today (and will be on sale Monday October 5), we've asked 11 New Zealand fashion designers to choose their favourite buildings.

Kate Sylvester (shown below) chose a home designed by Stevens Lawson Architects that won our Home of the Year award in 2007. The photograph is by Mark Smith.





The surprising thing was how many of the other designers - who include Karen Walker, Trelise Cooper, Beth Ellery and Alexandra Owen - chose historic buildings as their favourites. We presumed that these of-the-moment designers would be obsessed with contemporary structures. Then we wondered if timelessness actually stems from a design being of its time, rather than trying to stand apart from it.


You can check out the other designers' choices when our October November issue comes out. We hope you enjoy them.

Little and often

I apologise for having broken one of the cardinal rules of blogging: to communicate little and often, ideally in easily digestible daily chunks. It's also important to have something to say, and today we do: we have two talks coming up (presented in association with Wellington's Architectural Centre) at Caffe L'affare in Wellington that y'all are invited to.

Tomorrow night (Thursday September 10 at 6pm) architect Sharon Jansen of Tennent + Brown Architects will be giving a talk about two homes she's recently completed (one of which one a NZ Institute of Architects National Award for Architecture) and some she's designing at the moment. Entry to the talk is free (as are the drinks), just email homenewzealand@acpmagazines.co.nz to register. Here's Sharon:

And here's Turn Point Lodge, the house she designed in the Marlborough Sounds:

And this one's the house in Leigh. All photographs by Paul McCredie.

On Thursday October 8 (same time, same place) Roger Walker will be talking about some of his latest work. You can register for his talk at the same email address.

And here's one of the townhouse projects Roger has been working on: