Fashionable interiors

Our next issue, which we've just sent to press, is our annual focus on the connections between fashion and home design.

One of the things we think New Zealand homes could do with more of is colour, so for this issue of the magazine our stylists Tanya Wong and Jessica Allen decided to do a shoot that took its colour cues from the catwalks.

We wanted the colours to be really strong and graphic, as evidenced by some of the flats we used on set in the image above. Coincidentally (we planned the shoot before this happened) there appeared to be a lot of this bold, block colour on the catwalks at the recent Milan Fashion Week.

Tanya and Jess sourced clothes, art and furniture, chose a colour scheme to suit each of the four scenarios, and then designed sets for our shoot in photographer Toaki Okano's studio. Here are some behind-the-scenes pics from their shoot. Here, Toaki shoots the green-and-yellow setup, with a Kate Sylvester dress on the mannequin and a photograph by Richard Maloy on the wall:

Here's Toaki in the blue-and-pink setup, with a photograph by Anne Noble on the blue wall, and a dress by Karen Walker:

And there's the first spread of the final result in the magazine (somehow the colours on this JPEG don't look as vivid as they do in the final printed result, but you'll get the idea). The issue is on sale on October 11. Thanks to Resene for helping us out with the shoot - all the colours are from Resene The Range 2011/12. And well done to Tanya, Jess and Toaki for creating such a great series of images.

World Architecture Festival

Exciting news - two homes that have previously featured in our pages have been shortlisted for awards at the World Architecture Festival, to be held in Barcelona in November. One of those houses is Te Kaitaka - the Lake Wanaka retreat by Stevens Lawson Architects, which won our Home of the Year award this year:


You can see some of photographer Mark Smith's shots of the house at an earlier post here: http://homenewzealand.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-shots-of-our-winning-house.html

The other house to be shortlisted at the World Architecture Festival is a holiday home on Great Barrier Island by Paul Clarke of Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects, which we featured in our December/January issue last year:

You can see more of Simon Devitt's shoot of the house by Paul Clarke at an earlier post here: http://homenewzealand.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-outtakes.html

All the architects are going to Barcelona in November to make presentations about their buildings to the judges.

Congratulations are also due to New Zealand firms that have been shortlisted in other categories. They include Warren & Mahoney, who are shortlisted in the Civic & Community section of the festival for their design of the Supreme Court in Wellington, Auckland's RTA Studio, who are shortlisted in the Learning category for the AUT lecture theatres and conference centre they designed, and Copeland Associates Architects for their design of the Northland Event Centre.

Good luck to everyone involved - and have a great time in Barcelona.

David Mitchell & Julie Stout's studio

As promised earlier (and our apologies for this being a promise we've been slow to deliver on), here are some extra shots of David Mitchell and Julie Stout's studio, which is adjacent to their new house on Auckland's North Shore. The house was the subject of an earlier post, but as the studio is an intriguing structure in its own right, we wanted to share more of Patrick Reynolds' photos of it here.

David and Julie had the studio built before their house, and lived in it while the house went up on the site behind them. They liked the 19th century idea of garden follies, so designed a contemporary version for themselves. In the image below, you can see why some passersby thought the roof had slid off after construction was finished:


Now, the flaxes are flourishing on the roof garden, which makes for a great hangout for tui and a pleasant addition to the view from David and Julie's bathroom, on the third floor of the big house. In the shot below, you can see the inside of the studio, filled with light playing over the honeyed tones of the plywood linings.

The small kitchen is located underneath the mezzanine bedroom:


At one end of the kitchen, a small cutout in the cast concrete walls allows a glimpse of the shallow pool that surrounds much of the house, reflecting dappled patterns of light inside during the day.


Julie says the railings on the mezzanine floor make the world's best drying rack.


Upstairs, a tiny bathroom is tucked behind a glass partition beside the bed. This is a very small space, but its complexity and warmth make it easy to imagine living there, at least for a while. At the moment, Julie and David use it as a space for guests, but it could also be adapted to become a space for working from home, or rented out if necessary ... David and Julie both like the idea of the house being easily adapted to fit their future needs, or those of people who might eventually live in it after they're gone.

Daniel Marshall's other Waiheke house

Many of you who have the Home of the Year issue will already know this, but architect Daniel Marshall has two homes among this year's Home of the Year finalists, both of them on Waiheke Island. We featured one of the homes, at the eastern end of the island, in an earlier post. Let's now take a walk around the outside of the other one, on the island's northern slopes.

As you can see, the vista isn't at all bad. Daniel's response to it combines openness and solidity, with the house anchored firmly to the ground on one side and appearing to float over the Hauraki Gulf on the other. (These photographs are all by Patrick Reynolds). Both the following views from behind the house show the more closed-off, southerly elevation.


As we get closer to the house from the south, you can get a clearer idea of how it is hunkered in beside a small hill to the west.

The view below is from the east, which also shows how the house is protected a little by the hill on its westerly side.

Here, also looking from the east, you can see the strong south-facing wall that imparts a sense of solidity to the home's otherwise glassy interior. At the left of this image, you can see the stone wall that splays out across the driveway, directly visitors up stairs to the house (the garage is buried under the side of the house you can see in this image).

In our next post, we'll take you for a wander around the interior, as well as the courtyards Daniel designed to provide sheltered outdoor seating options on windy days.

Warren & Mahoney on Nine to Noon

"In my 80th year, I've got a big project". There's something quite marvellous about the optimism of architect Sir Miles Warren in this interview with Kathryn Ryan on Radio New Zealand National's Nine to Noon. Sir Miles believes the stone part of his historic home, Ohinetahi, will have to be demolished because of damage from Saturday's earthquake, but he says he has already mentally designed its replacement and is excited about having a project. Maurice Mahoney, Sir Miles' partner in the firm Warren & Mahoney, is also interviewed.

Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Nine to Noon : 2010 09 09

Daniel Marshall on Waiheke

The first of two houses by Daniel Marshall on Waiheke Island that are finalists in our Home of the Year award is at Waikopua Bay, at the very eastern end of the island. The house is located at the bottom of an incredibly steep driveway, and faces slightly southeast. Daniel decided to arrange the buildings - a carport, the main house and a guest room above a boatshed - around the path of an old stream bed that ran through the site. This creates the feeling of an encampment centred around the sunken courtyard at the rear of the living pavilion. These photographs - most of which we couldn't fit in the article on the house in our Home of the Year issue - are by Simon Devitt.


This view from the water shows the way the building nestles into its site. The Felipe Tohi sculpture out the front provides a useful navigation point, apparently, when guiding the fishing boat back in the evenings.


Daniel chose the black colour for much of the exterior so it would blend in with the dark trunks of the manuka trees behind it.

This view shows the stone wall of the living pavilion that borders the old creek bed and the path between the two structures.

Mitchell & Stout on the North Shore

David Mitchell & Julie Stout's home on Auckland's North Shore is a complex beast, so let's take a slow tour of the exterior, courtesy of our photographer Patrick Reynolds. Here's a view of the house from the street, looking up at the top-floor terrace:

This is a view of the main entrance, sheltered by a large polycarbonate sheet that sends rainwater into the half-pipe you can see in this shot. In rainstorms, the water rockets along it towards the tank:

The polycarbonate sheet in the shot below serves the purpose of lending privacy to the kitchen, without diminishing the amount of light that gets in there. You can see the lower slopes of Rangitoto in the distance in this shot, as well as the home's 'moat' with water lilies.

And here's another view of the 'moat', this time looking from between the house and the garden studio, which sits at a slightly offset angle to it. At some times of the day, the sunlight reflecting off the water creates a lovely quality of light inside the ground-floor flat occupied by Julie's mother.

This view is of the ramp leading from the garden to what Julie and David call the 'back' door of the house, which opens into the kitchen and dining area.

Come back and visit the blog next week and we'll take you for a few more photo tours, including David and Julie's garden studio, and some of the other Home of the Year houses.