Our new issue has winter goodness aplenty

Our winter issue is on newsstands RIGHT NOW and we're quite excited about all that it contains. First, here's the cover: a photograph by Simon Devitt of an amazing small home by Pattersons on the northern end of Banks Peninsula. Beautiful!

Here's a photograph by Simon Devitt of the home itself (below) in its spectacular setting:

Also in this issue, we visit a couple of remarkable New Zealand expats. Music manager Debbi Gibbs lives in Manhattan, but spends weekends on the New Jersey lakeside in this prefabricated home by Resolution: 4 Architecture (the home was mostly built in a factory and trucked to the site in four pieces). The photograph below, featuring Debbi and her son Blake, is by Emily Andrews.

Emily Andrews also visited London for this issue, where she photographed the flat of Christchurch-born interior designer Christopher Hall (below) who divides his time between the English capital and his homes in Istanbul (where he also designs furniture, including all the pieces in this photo) and Riyadh, where has has some major interior design commissions under way. He's a fascinating and very successful designer, and we're delighted to feature him in this issue.

Also in this issue! A delightful home (below) by Michael O'Sullivan (who also designed our 2011 Home of the Year on Kare Kare Beach) on Waiheke Island - it's warm, woody and economical, and well worth a closer look. The photo is by Simon Devitt.

And in Christchurch, we visit a vintage delight, a wonderful 1968 home (below) by Warren & Mahoney that is now owned (and adored) by Matthew Arnold of the design firm Sons & Co and his wife Kate. It was photographed by Samuel Hartnett. 

And let's not forget that this is our annual Design Awards issue, featuring the work of New Zealand's best furniture designers (brought to you this year by our new awards partner, Fisher & Paykel). Here's a group shot of them by Toaki Okano (below), and you can check out their fantastic work in the mag.

Our Design Awards finalists are (from left): Nat Cheshire of Cheshire Architects, Nathan Goldsworthy, Tim Webber, Simon James, Nigel Groom and Emma Fox-Derwin of Wellington's Well-Groomed Fox, and Timothy John. Look out for more of their designs in the magazine and in a subsequent post. In the meantime, enjoy our new issue!

Outtakes: Devonport house by Michael O'Sullivan

We really like this home in Devonport, Auckland, by architect Michael O'Sullivan of Bull O'Sullivan Architects (who also designed our Home of the Year in 2011). The long form of the home is clad in white weatherboards, while the interior is a deliberate contrast, full of warm timber. In the photo below, the home's co-owner Iain Wood sits just outside the property. Emily Andrews took the photographs, and Yvette Jay styled the shoot.

The opulent herringbone patterned ceiling (below) is a metaphorical protective cloak thrown over the family. The kitchen, with its dramatic onyx island, features north-facing windows with vertical timber mullions that cast ever-changing patterns of light and shadow through the house.

This is the view out the other side of the living space (below), where Iain admires the sight of Auckland's Waitemata Harbour from the sofas designed by his wife, Jes. The pendant lights in this room were designed by Michael O'Sullivan and blown by Lava Glass. The 'Pebble' tables by Jerry Low and Nathan Yong and the 'Caro' rug by Carmen Stallbaumer are both Ligne Roset from Auckland's Domo Collections.

Michael tucked a downstairs rumpus room for Iain Jes' daughters on the lower level of the house and lined the space in ply (below) with a deep red carpet. 

The pared-back main bedroom (below) features monochromatic bed linen from Seneca and a bedside table from BoConcept. Michael's aesthetic reference for the home's white weatherboard exterior and warm interior was Rangiatea, the famous Maori church in Otaki.

The photo below shows the home's long, low roof pitch, which references the 1950s designs by Group Architects, many of which were also constructed on the North Shore.

The Adirondacks - a small-world story

How's this for a charming small-world story? This week we received an email from Christina Kaiser, an expat American who has been living in New Zealand for the last 13 years. Christina wrote to us because she remembers hiking, and skiing and camping beside Raquette Lake in New York State's Adirondacks Mountains, the same location as the beautiful cabin photographed by Emily Andrews in our current issue. 

(To jog your memories, here's one of Emily's photographs featuring expat New Zealander Adrian van Schie, who designed and built the cabin, and his sons Huck and Tana. Alexandra Perce, Adrian's wife and the boys' mother, is just out of frame). 

Christina Kaiser's connection to the Adirondacks and Raquette Lake runs deeper than the aforementioned childhood memories: her father, architecture professor Harvey Kaiser, wrote The Great Camps of the Adirondacks, probably the definitive tome on this important aspect of the area's history. In the mid-1800s, wealthy families from New York would come upstate for the summer and stay in tents or compounds made up of structures that, even when they became elaborate, still aspired to a type of rusticity. (Adrian and Alexandra's cabin shown above was built recently, but it emulates the rusticity of the buildings in the Great Camps nearby.) 

Christina writes:

[Dad's] book helped popularise the term 'great camp' and drew an incredible amount of attention to these historic places and their need for preservation. Without planning it, he became an expert on the great camps and local celebrity in the largest state park in the country. Thirty years later, he is still regularly asked to give talks about the great camps. 

Sam Eichblatt's story for us touches on the way preservation efforts of the camps were galvanised in the mid-1970s. Harvey Kaiser's important role in these efforts came about almost accidentally, Christina writes:

  

When Syracuse University announced plans to sell Camp Sagamore, my dad was an architecture professor and a Senior Vice President at the university. According to him, he "turned up at the auction in September 1976 and while standing there, as an Adirondack novice from Brooklyn, wondered who built the place, why did they build it out of logs down this 5-mile road from the nearest highway, and so on. When I couldn't find any answers in print - virtually zero was ever published about the camps - I decided there should be some advocacy voice to bring to the public's attention these rustic architecture masterpieces. So I researched, wrote, took pictures, and found a good publisher."

The rest is history, as 40,000 copies of the book are in print, and the preservation efforts it helped inspire have ensured many of the camps have survived. We're delighted Christina got in touch, and that our story prompted this connection with Harvey. We're looking forward to the new edition of his book (due in late 2014 or early 2015), and we applaud the way his work turned out to be instrumental in preserving the unique buildings of this area. We'll end this post with a photo Christina sent us of her and Harvey at a signing of the book at Lake Placid 1982 or 1983. 

Our new cover

Our new cover is on newsstands today - the beautifully crafted home on it is by Michael O'Sullivan, the photograph is by Emily Andrews, and the shot was styled by Yvette Jay.

 

Inside the issue is an abundance of great stuff, including homes by Wellington's Tennent + Brown Architects, Atelierworkshop, Christchurch's Wilson & Hill and Auckland's Andrew Patterson, as well as our former art director Miranda Dempster's New York apartment and a beautiful cabin built by expat New Zealander Adrian van Schie in New York State's Adirondacks Mountains. 

Also! We present our biannual bathroom design focus, travel to six chic global destinations, design writer Douglas Lloyd Jenkins tells a tale of the rebirth of a sleek mid-century hotel in Putaruru, we feature Kate Sylvester and Douglas + Bec's new furniture range, and much more.

Our new cover

Our new cover is a photograph by Emily Andrews of the home of fashion designer Rebecca Taylor and her husband Wayne Pate in New York City. You can read Sam Eichblatt's in-depth interview with Rebecca Taylor about this confidently eclectic home (as well as see more of Emily's beautiful photographs) in our new issue, on newsstands Monday August 6th! We hope you like it. 

This issue's content features:

• Karen Walker's new homeware line
• Fantastic new guest quarters at Cloudy Bay, designed by Tim Greer and Paul Rolfe
• A 1928 Arts & Crafts abode by James Chapman-Taylor, brought back to life by architect Andrew Bull and fashion designer Sandra Harden
• A clifftop home by Malcolm Taylor on an "almost too perfect" Auckland site
• Architect Marc Lithgow uses the footprint of an old brick garage for a compact, elegant new home in Auckland
• An innovative Z-shaped house by Glamuzina Paterson Architects
• A cleverly redesigned garden in New Plymouth by Michael Mansvelt of Plantation Design Studio
• and terrific stories by writers Jolisa Gracewood, Simon Devitt, Caroll Bucknell, Sam Eichblatt and others...

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.