HOME New Zealand on Sunrise - an Auckland heritage apartment

Last week's Sunrise slot featured an Auckland apartment that will feature in our next issue, a Renovations special that will be on newsstands on April 5 (Easter Monday). It's a sensitive update of a gracious old space by Schulze Poursoltan Architects.

Home design - New York-style apartment in Auckland

This photograph of the living space is by Florence Noble - see the full feature in our next issue.

Home of the Year 2010

Entries closed last Thursday for our Home of the Year 2010 award, which we're once again very pleased to be bringing to you with our partners BMW.

As usual, there's a great diversity of entries, some of them immediately alluring, others almost demanding a site visit to find out more about a place that doesn't fully explain itself in the entry photographs.

Early next week I'll be reviewing all the entries and choosing a shortlist of properties to visit with my fellow judges, former Home of the Decade winner Ken Crosson of Auckland's Crosson Clarke Carnachan, and New York architect Charles Renfro of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (who is being brought to New Zealand to give lectures in April with the assistance of First Windows & Doors.

The Home of the Year issue won't be out until August, but we'll be on the road judging the houses in mid-April. We'll keep you posted about developments on this site in the meantime. This is the 15th anniversary of the Home of the Year award, so expect a bumper issue to hit newsstands in August.

The treehouse

Some houses get the joy squeezed out of them during the arduous journey to being designed and built, but this house is not one of them. It is a house in Titirangi by Adam Mercer of Mercer & Mercer Architects, one that stretches exuberantly upwards from its bushy site to get sun and views that must be the envy of many a low-lying neighbour. We'll be featuring this house, photographed by Patrick Reynolds, in full in our April/May issue (out in the first week of April). In the meantime, here's a wee tease:

Tomorrow on TV3

Tomorrow on TV3's Sunrise we'll be featuring the McCahon houses in Auckland's Titirangi - the artists' residence designed by Pete Bossley and Andrea Bell, and the cottage that McCahon himself and his family owned in the early 1950s. Here's a view of the artists' residence, designed to snake its way through the trees. (The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.)


The artists' residence is administered by the McCahon House Trust, which selects the artists who, lucky things, to get reside and work there for three-month periods. The artists who have spent time there since it opened in 2007 include Judy Millar, Rohan Wealleans, Gavin Hipkins, James Robinson, Richard Lewer, Luise Fong, Eve Armstrong and Lisa Reihana. You can find out more information about the trust, its work and the artists it has hosted on its website, www.mccahonhouse.org.nz.

In the image below, you can see both the artists' residence and the original McCahon cottage, and how they relate to each other on the site. The original cottage is further down the hill, and while it's lovely in summer, it would have been very damp and gloomy in winter.

The restoration of the original McCahon house was managed by architect Graeme Burgess, while Rick Pearson designed the discreet displays that tell visitors about McCahon, his life and his work. I remember wanting to use this shot below of the kitchen (with its painting by McCahon on the cupboards) on our April/May 2007 cover, but then getting cold feet. I wish now that I'd been braver about it, not only because the image is one which would resonate with many New Zealanders, but because I think the house is a very eloquent building that tells us a lot about an aspect of our history. It's a place I always like to take overseas visitors to - even if they don't know McCahon, there's something about visiting the house that feels like a very authentic New Zealand experience.

And here's the exterior of the original (and very humble) cottage, with the artists' residence just discernable in the background. Tune into TV3 tomorrow around 8.40am to see more, or check the link on the website when we post it.

Garden outtakes

One of our favourite annual features is our Landscapes special, which we publish every February. This year, as usual, we found a fantastic range of gardens established by people with very different philosophies of gardening. Architect Pete Bossley and his partner, artist Miriam van Wezel, favour the highly considered and structured approach, which has resulted in a garden of elegant restraint at their home in the Auckland suburb of Westmere.

These photographs are by Mark Smith.

Here's a view of the garden and its pond, which also shows the clever way it borrows views of neighbouring foliage, making for a park-like outlook.


This shot shows Miriam in one of her favourite spots, a concrete bench with a view of the garden that retains solar heat, making it a warm place to sit on cooler evenings.

The garden is on a sloping site, which Pete and Miriam have carefully divided up with a series of small retaining walls that also manage the way people walk through the area. Pete is a master of moving people elegantly through spaces in his architecture, so it makes sense that he applies the same philosophy and rigour in his garden.

And I put this final shot in for Pete, who complained the other day that we didn't show enough of the oioi reeds that dominate their front yard, one of his favourite parts of the garden. We don't have a shot of the whole front yard, but most of it is covered with these reeds, which Miriam has tied up in ponytails like you can see in this photograph.

We'll run more outtakes from other gardens featured in the current issue in the coming days.

Building a bach at blustery Bethells beach - Sunrise - Video - 3 News

Here's a link to this morning's house on TV3's Sunrise - a bach by Gary Hopkinson at Bethells Beach that we originally published in our December/January 2007 issue. One of the nice things about working with TV3 is the chance to revisit great houses from past issues like this one.

Building a bach at blustery Bethells beach - Sunrise - Video - 3 News

Posted using ShareThis

Charles Renfro, New Zealand bound

Now this really is exciting news (which you may have also seen in the magazine itself): with the help of the lovely folk at First Windows & Doors, we're bringing New York architect Charles Renfro of the firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro to New Zealand, where he'll be giving lectures in Auckland and Wellington.

DS+R are best-known at the moment for their work designing the High Line, New York's triumphant sliver of parkland that runs along an abandoned elevated railway on Manhattan's lower West Side. These photographs of it are by Iwan Baan:

And this is Charles himself:

It'll be Charles' first visit to New Zealand. His Auckland lecture is being held on Tuesday April 13 at 6pm at the Fisher & Paykel Auditorium in the Owen G. Glenn building on the University of Auckland campus. His Wellington lecture is being held on Wednesday April 14 at 6pm in the Adam Auditorium in City Gallery in Civic Square.

Charles will have a lot to talk about, including DS+R's work on the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and the refurbishment of New York's Lincoln Center. The common thread in all these works is DS+R's determination to use these structures to add dynamism to the urban realm outside them - their designs are the opposite of self-contained.

Tickets are $15 for subscribers and students, and $20 for regular folk. You can purchase them at www.ticketek.co.nz (just type 'Charles Renfro' into the search box).

You can see more of DS+R's work at www.dillerscofidio.com. Please come to the lectures - we think Charles is going to be one of the most interesting speakers you'll see in the country this year. Thanks again, too, to First Windows & Doors for their generous support of his visit.