Architect Amanda Levete is coming to New Zealand

We're delighted to announce that the Stirling Prize-winning London architect Amanda Levete will travel to New Zealand be the international member of our Home of the Year 2014 jury. She will give lectures in Auckland (on Monday March 10) and Christchurch (on Wednesday March 12) about her remarkable work. Tickets to the lectures can be purchased here. We're grateful for the support of Altherm Window Systems, our Home of the Year sponsor, whose generosity has made Amanda's visit possible.  

Amanda Levete in her London office. Photograph by Peter Guenzel.

HOME editor Jeremy Hansen met Levete at her office in London last June. Here's his profile of her from the current issue of the magazine:

Amanda Levete almost didn’t become an architect. Expelled from school for sunbathing naked on the roof when she should have been at biology class, she had no idea what she was going to do next. “I got so embarrassed that all my friends were going to university that I did an A-level in art and art history and a foundation year at art school,” she told Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian. “That’s when architecture came across my radar, and when it did, I realised that I work best when I’m doing something creatively, but have a boundary to push.”

Levete (pronounced Lev-eet) has been pushing boundaries to create remarkable buildings ever since. For 20 years she was one-half of the innovative firm Future Systems with her then-husband, the late Jan Kaplický. Together they designed the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground, a curvaceous pod of white aluminium that almost bankrupted them but then won the 1999 Stirling Prize, Britain’s most prestigious architecture award. Their subsequent design for Birmingham’s Selfridges store, a swoop of a building covered in circular aluminium discs, was hailed as a symbol of the city’s regeneration. Kaplicky stormed out of the Selfridges opening because the finished structure wasn’t as pure as their original design. Levete was more pragmatic. “I don’t devalue the power of conceptual thinking, but for me the thrill of architecture is to see your ideas realised – to struggle against the problems out there and overcome them,” she told Jeffries.  

An aerial rendering of what the EDP Cultural Centre in Lisbon will look like on completion.

A rendering of the EDP Foundation Cultural Centre in Lisbon, Portugal, designed by Amanda Levete Architects and currently under construction.
 

The EDP Cultural Centre is a dramatic swoop on the Tagus River with a rooftop walkway.

A rendering of the cultural centre's exterior and its
specially designed tiles.

Levete and Kaplicky had a son, Josef, but divorced in 2006 – “a very public falling out,” according to  Levete. Kaplicky, who was Czech, died in Prague in 2009 at the age of 71, just after visiting his second wife, Eliska, and their newborn daughter in hospital. He and Levete had continued working together after their divorce, but had agreed to separate their architectural practice four months before his death, which is when Levete established Amanda Levete Architects.

Anyone who wondered if she had been riding on the coattails of Kaplický’s genius (a word Levete uses to describe him) has since been thoroughly silenced. In 2011, Levete won an international competition to build an extension to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. The 1,500-square-metre gallery for temporary exhibitions will be the biggest new art space in London since the Tate Modern; the project also involves the design of a new entry to the building from Exhibition Road. An earlier scheme by Daniel Libeskind was abandoned seven years earlier after encountering a storm of public option. “It was an iconic building, but the time for iconic buildings has passed,” Levete told The Guardian. Her design is currently under construction.

A rendering of Amanda Levete Architects' competition-winning scheme for a new entry and gallery space for London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Another rendering of the V&A project, which features a courtyard connected to Exhibition Road.

 

Two views of the new subterranean gallery spaces that are
currently under construction at the V&A.

Other major projects are nearing completion: a waterfront cultural centre in Lisbon that reads as a dramatic bulge in the landscape; a shimmering high-rise hotel and shopping centre in Bangkok which Levete will attend the opening of on her way home from helping to choose our 2014 Home of the Year. She has also designed furniture for London’s Established & Sons and writes regularly about architecture, design and urbanism for The New Statesman (you can read her articles here). Her office, a non-descript semi-industrial building in London’s northeast, now employs more than 50 staff, who pad around on the immaculate space’s bright carpet in socks (the office’s no-shoe office rule means you are greeted by an archipelago of footwear when you arrive at reception).  

Two views of Amanda Levete's London home, photographed by Gidon Fuehrer.

This will be Levete’s first visit to New Zealand. Her husband Ben Evans, director of the London Design Festival, will accompany her. She has already reviewed the entries in the 2014 Home of the Year with us, and will help choose a winner when we visit the shortlisted homes in person. 

First impressions? This year’s entrants are notable for their “modesty in scale and materials and technology, and within that they’re searching for something quite profound and poetic,” she says. That seems promising.

We’re looking forward to showing her the best New Zealand homes of the past year. Please come along to Levete's Auckland and Christchurch lectures: it’s a rare chance to hear a remarkable talent reveal more about her remarkable work.

Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems: Newmarket Townhouses by Scarlet Architects

It was a tale of two townhouses when architects Jane Aimer and Lindley Naismith decided to design their own homes in the Auckland suburb of Newmarket. 

In this, the second of our series of Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems, Aimer and Naismith talk about how the design of their homes was also a masterclass in project and budget management. The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.

Jane Aimer, her husband Paul Kelly, and their children Gina
and Tom are in the left-hand townhouse, while Lindley
Naismith and her partner John Balasoglou
occupy the right-hand home.

Naismith and Aimer live next door to each other in in twin houses they designed themselves (with the assistance of their partner at Scarlet Architects, Mike Dowsett). Being so deeply involved in their own building process gave them even greater insight into their clients’ experiences, and the challenges of managing budgets. “Nothing hones the mind more than doing it for yourself,” Naismith says. “It gives you an insight into the stress of the project and what happens to people psychologically as they go through it. It’s a heady mix of financial pressure, emotional pressure, time pressure and relationship pressure.” 

The homes have shutters that filter late-afternoon westerly light and are a nod to the heritage homes in the neighbourhood.

From left: Mike Dowsett, Lindley Naismith and
Jane Aimer of Scarlet Architects.

Much of that pressure stems from the common misperception that equates a builder’s tender with the overall budget for a house, when in the final reckoning, the overall cost of a home can be far, far higher than that. That’s because a builder’s tender doesn’t include the costs of all the extras needed to complete a home: lighting, interior cabinetry, landscaping, drapes, bathroom and kitchen fittings and fixtures … the list is long and the size of the final bill can vary enormously. 

The rear view of the homes (which are on separate titles)
shows Aimer's home on the right, and Naismith's on the left.
The gardens are connected by two sliding doors - if either
couple has theirs shut, it's a signal they don't want to
be interrupted (although this is rarely the case). 

The view to the garden from the living room in Aimer's house. The artwork is by Tracey Tawhiao.

In Aimer and Naismith's own project, they attempted to assess the cost of all these extras early on in the design process, just after the builder’s quote had arrived. They estimated a budget for each of the items over and above the builder’s estimate, and as the building process continued they endeavoured to make each of these items adhere as closely as possible to their original estimates to keep the budget on track. “It’s the little increments that can get you,” Lindley says. 

Rooms in each home are arranged vertically around light-filled stairwells - green in Aimer's home, and red in Naismith's.

The staircase in Naismith's home features red plexiglass.

This kind of budget creep – a few extra thousand here, and a few more there – may be the source of the old (and unfair) adage that if you’re using an architect, you should set a budget and then expect to double it. In the relatively recent past, it was indeed considered an architect’s job to estimate a client’s budget. These days, the process of building has become much more complicated, and the possible range of variations much greater. That’s why Aimer, Naismith and Dowsett prefer to get a quantity surveyor involved in the early stages of every project. “We always do a reality check early on,” Aimer says. “We haven’t got a project until the client is happy with the cost of it.” 

A view of the kitchen and dining area in Naismith's home.

Looking into the living room of Aimer's home from the stairwell.

Even then, it remains the clients’ responsibility to control the budget and keep track of expenditure (unless they have employed a project manager or paid the architects to manage the building process). After all, architects have no control over whether their clients choose top-of-the-range kitchen appliances, or lavish bathroom tiles, or other budget-blowing interior finishes that may not have been originally specified. Says Naismith: “There’s a huge responsibility there for clients, and some of them ignore it. Often if things are over budget, it’s not the responsibility of the architect, because of the fittings the client has chosen. You can have fancy tiles and wonderful lighting, but the budget might not be estimated for that level of finish.” 

This sectional drawing shows the way both homes are organised around their central stairwells.

Ironically, when it came to their own project Jane and Lindley ignored their own good advice of getting a quantity surveyor’s estimate, and instead relied on their own best estimates of the non-build costs. These estimates weren’t as accurate as a quantity surveyor would have been. Jane and Lindley’s houses were budgeted to cost about $750,000 each. Because Jane and her partner Paul had a little more flexibility with their budget, they specified high-quality lighting and other fittings, and ended up spending about $250,000 more. Lindley, however, wanted to stick more closely to her budget, which often resulted in her and her partner John choosing cheaper options, and spending about $120,000 more than they anticipated, all the while resisting the pressure all renovators or new-home builders come under to finish a job “properly”. 

Another view of the exterior of the homes. The cottage on the
right was an earlier project renovated by Naismith.

A little extra here and there may not seem like a big deal in comparison to the overall amount of money being spent, but each of these items adds up. But now their homes are complete and happily occupied, neither Jane nor Lindley thinks they have over-capitalised, and both say they are now better informed about managing budgets than ever. 

Naismith's living room features a Skagen couch from
Bromhead Design and a Lammhults-designed chair from
Katalog. The bench is by George Nelson for Herman
Miller from Matisse, and the 'Tolomeo' floor lamps and
Arteluce table lamp are from ECC.

The mezzanine study in Naismith's home overlooks the dining area.

Q+A

Mike Dowsett, Lindley Naismith and Jane Aimer of Scarlet Architects

HOME How did you estimate your budget? 

Mike Dowsett After the builder’s estimated price came in, we set a budget based on previous jobs and guestimated figures for additional items. 

Jane Aimer We took a stab at trying to identify things that weren’t part of the builder’s price. The builder’s cost is nowhere near the full cost, so setting that budget early on was really good for us, as we’d compare it to every sub-contractors’ quote that came in, and if their quote was higher, then we’d discuss what we needed to do to get it down.

Lindley Naismith The best way to avoid budget blowouts is to rigorously estimate the budget at an early stage.

HOME When things looked too expensive, how easy was it to bring costs down? 

Lindley Naismith One example is how we put a lot of effort into the stairwells that form the core of our homes. We found the original quote was for them to be built in a highly finished architectural way. In the end we chose a more commercial-style installation and decided to live with the imperfections. It’s less refined, with bolts visible, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Mike Dowsett Originally we had specified commercial-grade windows, but they turned out too expensive so we used standard residential windows that we bulked up a bit so they read as heavier sections.

HOME Why do you use a quantity surveyor on jobs you are designing for clients?  

Lindley Naismith We really push for it even if our clients want to rush ahead. Because we are optimistic folk we want to please our clients, so the temptation to underestimate is huge. So getting a quantity surveyor in involves a third party and takes the project away from us being optimistic.

Jane Aimer If you want a job to meet a budget you have to look at all the line items and make sure they meet budgets. Clients have to be rigorous about that, with our help.

The homes' shared rooftop features a hot tub underneath an array of solar panels.