World Architecture Festival - the NZ finalists

New Zealand architects have made a fantastically strong showing in the shortlist of nominees for awards at the World Architecture Festival.

First, with an impressive three nominations (and one shared one) are these projects from Fearon Hay Architects: The Brancott Estate Heritage Centre in Marlborough (below), shortlisted in the  'Display' category of the festival and featured in our December/January 2012 issue. The photo below is by Patrick Reynolds.

 

Fearon Hay's Imperial Lane project in Auckland (below), featured in our February/March issue, picked up a nomination in the festival's 'Old and New' category. Photo by Patrick Reynolds.

Jeff Fearon and Tim Hay are going to have a very busy time of it when they present shortlisted projects to the judges at the festival in Singapore in October: their Island Retreat (below), featured in our current issue, has been shortlisted in the 'Villa' category of the awards. 

And the firm was also nominated in the urban design category, along with Taylor Cullity Lethlean of Melbourne, for their excellent work at Auckland's North Wharf (below). Both photos by Patrick Reynolds.

   

In non-Fearon Hay nominations, Ken Crosson of Crosson Clarke Carnachan's Hut on Sleds at Whangapoua Beach (below), a finalist in our Home of the Year award 2012, is shortlisted in the festival's 'Villa' category. Photo by Jackie Meiring. 

Patterson Associates' Geyser building (below) on Auckland's Parnell Road is nominated in the festival's 'Office' category. 

As we mentioned earlier in the week, RTA Studio's C3 house (below, which is planned, but not yet built) has picked up a nomination in the 'Future Projects' section.

Also in 'Future Projects' a planned Waikato Whanau Ora centre (below) by Hamish Monk, Aaron Paterson and Dominic Glamuzina of The Flood.

All the finalists will travel to the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in October to give presentations about their work to a panel of judges. We wish them luck, and congratulate them on their success in getting this far. 

The full World Architecture Festival shortlist is here.

Outtakes: William Tozer's London loft

Here are a few unpublished outtakes from a home featured in our current issue, a loft apartment in a former factory in London designed by New Zealand-born architect William Tozer. Photographs are by Emily Andrews.

Seen below, shelving in the TV room - a snug space off a generous, gallery-like hall - displays a collection of artworks and books.

 

A study area is also located off the gallery space, with a built-in desk and shelving. 

 
The dining area (below) features pendant lights by Phillippe Starck, a table by Belgian designer and architect Maarten van Severen and 'Pelle' chairs by Hiroyuki Toyoda.

There's a view of the London skyline from the terrace, which wraps itself around two sides of the apartment. 

   

Tozer's design preserves much of the building's industrial origins, leaving the raw concrete ceiling exposed throughout the building. In the kitchen, pipes for the rangehood are also left exposed. 

The view below looks from the kitchen towards the apartment's living area. The pendant lights over the kitchen island are by Danish designer Cecilie Manz.

This shot of the home's main bedroom shows William Tozer's clever insertion of new elements such as the en suite bathroom, with the dark timber clearly demarcating the old and new structures.

RTA Studio in the World Architecture Festival

Congratulations to Richard Naish and the team at Auckland's RTA Studio: their design for the carbon-neutral 'C3' house has just been selected as a finalist in the 'Future Projects' section at the World Architecture Festival. 

The as-yet-unbuilt house has been designed for a site near Lake Wanaka, and will be constructed from 100 percent recyclable or reusable materials including local stone, timber and rammed earth. It has been designed to achieve carbon-neutral certification once completed.

Richard will travel to Singapore in October to make a presentation to the World Architecture Festival jury about the house. The World Architecture Festival winners will be announced soon afterwards. 

This is RTA Studio's fourth year in a row at the World Architecture Festival. Last year Richard's own home was a finalist. It was preceded by the RTA's AUT lecture theatre and conference centre in 2010, and the Ironbank building on Auckland's Karangahape Road in 2009. 

The renderings below of the C3 house show how it will look after construction, a subtle presence in a beautiful landscape.  We'll keep you posted with more details from the festival in October. We'll have more details on this exciting project in our October issue, too.

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.

Outtakes: Home of the Year 2012

Every magazine shoot yields far more images than we can ever fit in our pages - so we like to take the opportunity to show you a few of our favourite outtakes here on the blog. This time, it's our Home of the Year 2012 by Herbst Architects, that marvellous structure amid a pohutukawa grove at Piha. The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds - and once again, a big thank you to our Home of the Year partners Altherm Window Systems for their support of the award. Thanks also to our intern, Jett Nichol, who's here for a week from Napier learning a bit about the magazine trade (as well as compiling these albums).

The image below shows the steps from the house out to the back deck, which catches the morning sun in summer. This opening also establishes a strong diagonal connection across the living space, as well as allowing cooling cross-breezes in summer.

In each bedroom, the walls have been lined in poplar ply, its light colour establishing a calm mood. This shot shows the main bedroom, which is entered via a mezzanine walkway above the living space.

The branch-like roof struts reinforce the relationship between the man-made structure and its natural surroundings, blurring the boundaries between the building and the tree canopy.

Inside, the tall timber wall (its cedar patterns mimicking the pattern of the bark outside) makes the living area undeniably cosy, despite the openness of space.

This view of the home shows the boardwalk drive platform leading to the carefully concealed single garage (which is under the main bedroom). The house was designed on piles positioned to avoid the pohutukawa roots on the site.