art houses A family's pavilion in a garden Four NZ painters to collect now A Wellington mid-century marvel
How two creative couples made affordable homes The restoration of a modernist masterpiece In Studio: 22 pages of artists' spaces and alluring artworks Laid-back living above Otago Harbour
Bathrooms Tiles, taps and ďŹ ve beautiful spaces
A new threshold in luxurious lounging “Nothing compares to the latest sofa creation - STANDARD from Francesco Binfare for EDRA. When I sat in this Sofa System at last year’s Milan Fair I could not believe cosiness like this was possible. The key element is a “smart pillowâ€? that acts as a backrest and armrest which both adjust to provide total freedom RI SRVLWLRQV IRUPDO DQG LQIRUPDO 7KH FRXQWOHVV FRQĂ€JXUDWLRQV RI WKH HOHYHQ PRGXODU SLHFHV UHSUHVHQW WKH XOWLPDWH LQ Ă H[LELOLW\ DQG DGDSWDELOLW\ SURYLGLQJ LQĂ€QLWH VHDWLQJ DUUDQJHPHQWV IRU SHRSOH DOO UHOD[LQJ VLPXOWDQHRXVO\ LQ OX[XU\ DQG FRPIRUW Âľ - Alan Bertenshaw (Matisse)
99 The Strand, Parnell, Auckland | 134 Victoria Street, Christchurch Auckland +64 9 302 2284
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Christchurch +64 3 366 0623
|
| www.matisse.co.nz
E design@matisse.co.nz
where design becomes art
SEE WHAT YOU CAN SEE The way a shadow falls. The way light bounces. The colour of rock. The unfaltering straightness of a line. The delicate beauty of a curve. The strong and noble angle. Noticing what isn’t. Savouring every detail. Seeing what others cannot. Seeing through someone else’s eyes.
A LT / H O M E 16 D P S
THERE IS MUCH TO INSPIRE US WHEN WE LOOK AROUND.
Proud sponsors of Home of the Year Lectures and Home of the Year 2016 When you know where to look for inspiration, you can ďŹ nd it. Visit altherm.co.nz and see what you can see.
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Contents ART HOUSES
76.
88.
100.
114.
126.
STANDING STRONG AND OUTSIDE TIME
HOUSING THAT DOESN’T COST A FORTUNE
TAKING ART BEYOND THESE WALLS
A MODERNIST ICON, DEFILED AND RESTORED
THE ART OF LIVING ON THE EDGE
A Wellington home inspires with its illustrious past
NZ artist Ruth Buchanan’s affordable home
An art-filled pavilion in a garden by Pattersons
The complex hisstory of Eileen Gray’s E.1027
A home and studio above the harbour at Port Chalmers
76
100
88
114
126
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 09
ART & DESIGN 21. DESIGN DISCOVERIES
40. BATHING BEAUTIES Bathroom accessories
Fresh finds unveiled
26. NEW SPACES Auckland’s Saan and Wellington’s Caughley
28. CERAMICS & FLORISTRY 62
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Florence Weir and Muck Floral and General
30. STEALTH SIMPLICITY A holiday home prototype by Evelyn McNamara
32. CLASSIC LINES A local fashion label visits Auckland’s Brake House
34. FAIR TRADE The Auckland Art Fair gets bigger and better
37. MASTERFUL CRAFTING Gallery-worthy furniture 53
48
EXTRAS 138. SUBSCRIBE TO HOME A year’s worth of design
140. STYLE SAFARI All the details of HOME’s upcoming Auckland tour
142. CLASSIFIEDS 68
10 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
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Flooring, art and furniture and design options
44. BATHROOMS Five refined spaces
52. FOUR PAINTERS Showcasing Imogen Taylor, Kim Pieters, Kirstin Carlin and Stella Corkery
56. STILL LIVES Inside Julian Dashper’s studio, which is just as he left it
62. A CROSS TO BEAR Stephen Bambury farewells his beloved studio
68. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Art and design pieces defy the light
146. FAVOURITE BUILDING Jenny Harper on the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
‘Elementary’ Stool by Jamie McLellan Auckland: 19 Earle St, Parnell | 09 309 0500 | auckland@backhousenz.com Wellington: 12 Kaiwharawhara Rd | 04 499 8847 | wellington@backhousenz.com
backhousenz.com
photo credit: fotostudio.be
Architecture Design Elegance Modern
We’ve seen curved elements introduced into furniture design in recent years, and now this sensual elegance makes its way into the Seymour seating system and Leslie armchair released at Milan in April.
When paired with the Elliott coffee table and the Leslie armchair it creates an ambience of well-measured elegance that mimics the Milanese design from the 50’s and 60’s.
Seymour is comprised of linear and curved seating elements that form three-dimensional curves and make it possible to create both small fixed sofas as well as larger linear or corner compositions.
Mike Thorburn Managing Director, ECC
Since 1909
www.ecc.co.nz
Auckland Wellington Christchurch Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Milano
SEE WHAT YOU CAN SEE THERE IS MUCH TO INSPIRE US WHEN WE LOOK AROUND. The way a shadow falls. The way light bounces. The colour of rock. The unfaltering straightness of a line. The delicate beauty of a curve. The strong and noble angle. Noticing what isn’t. Savouring every detail. ALT/HOME16FP
Seeing what others cannot. Seeing through someone else’s eyes.
When you know where to look for inspiration, you can find it.
Visit altherm.co.nz and see what you can see.
Get the latest online homemagazine.co.nz @homenewzealand @_jeremyhansen facebook.com/homenewzealand instagram.com/homenewzealand
Photography / Mark Smith
EDITOR’S LETTER
Top left The Wellington home of artist Ann Shelton and art director Duncan Munro, p.76. Photograph by Paul McCredie. Top right A home for two art teachers with views of Otago Harbour, p.126. Photograph by Simon Devitt. Above left Eileen Gray’s recently restored E.1027, p.114. Photograph by Mary Gaudin. Above right An Auckland pavilion in a garden by Pattersons, p.100. Photograph by Simon Devitt.
To be creative sometimes requires as much courage as it does talent – and this applies as much to art as it does to architecture. Creative success takes a high-wire balance of self-criticism (to hone a talent until it’s as good as it can get) and self-belief (to avoid being crippled by the aforementioned self-criticism). The near-impossibility of achieving this balance explains why great art and architecture are so rare and miraculous. Our annual Art Houses issue celebrates people with the bravery and talent to walk the creative high-wire. In these pages, our special ‘In Studio’ section (p.52) showcases four fantastic New Zealand painters, all of them producing wonderfully uncompromising work that asks not for easy acceptance, but for the rest of us to stop and think. Writer Julie Hill visits artist Stephen Bambury in his soon-tobe-demolished studio and fi nds his creative passion undimmed despite a year of high-profi le upheavals (p.62). And Mark Kirby writes about the fascinating studio of his friend, the late Julian Dashper, which looks just as it did when the artist died in 2009 (p.56). The homes in this issue are equally remarkable. We visit artist New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan in her Berlin apartment to learn about a successful affordable housing model (p.88), and check in on the great designer Eileen Gray’s recently restored modernist masterpiece, E.1027, in the French Riviera (p.114). We take in gorgeous views of Otago Harbour from a thrifty home for two art teachers by Tim Heath (p.126). Artist Ann Shelton talks us through the remarkable history of her mid-century Wellington home (p.76). And in Auckland, we meet a philanthropic couple who are working to make the joys of art more accessible (p.100). It’s a head-spinning variety of homes, but what they have in common is the creative passion of their owners. We’re delighted to share that with you here. Jeremy Hansen
As I write this, we’re about to embark on our week-long tour of the country judging the homes shortlisted for our 21st Home of the Year award. I’m being joined on the road by two highly qualified jury members: Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig, whose work is internationally acclaimed, and Wellington-based architect Stuart Gardyne, the winner of the 2015 NZ Institute of Architects Gold Medal for lifetime achievement. The architects of the winning home will receive a $15,000 cash prize thanks to our Home of the Year sponsors, Altherm Window Systems. This year, we’re also introducing new categories to recognise excellent design in small homes, muiti-unit residential developments, beach and city homes. The shortlist of homes we’re visiting suggests some tough choices lie ahead. We look forward to bringing you the results online and in our next issue, on sale on April 4.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 15
CONTRIBUTORS
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TOAKI OKANO
ANTHONY BYRT
JULIE HILL
Toaki shot Julian Dashper’s studio (p.56), as well as artworks in dark corners (p.68).
Anthony is an art critic and reviewer who profiles four artists in this issue (p.52).
The writer visited artist Stephen Bambury at his soonto-be-demolished studio (p.62).
You photographed the late Julian Daspher’s studio for this issue. What was the space like to be in, and to photograph? Did it give you a sense of what he was like as a person? I was very excited to shoot Julian’s studio, as it was such a personal space. Every area was arranged with precisely placed tools, brushes and other items he’d collected. It felt as if every item was treated with the love and care he’d give to a work of art.
You’ve written about four interesting New Zealand painters in this issue. What made them stand out? I’m always interested in how painters take a medium so loaded with convention and history and push it forward. These four don’t opt for the nuclear option: they all work within a traditional framework of paint, brushes, rectangles. Yet, in their own ways, they interrogate that space with critical and reflective intelligence.
You also shot Amelia Holmes’ styled shoot for this issue, featuring some beautiful artwork and furniture. How did you work with Amelia to create the shadowy mood of the shoot? I always enjoy working with Amelia. This shoot started out with non-moody light, but I wanted to see how it would look if we pushed it a bit. We liked it, so we pushed it a little bit further. I think it turned out well.
People keep proclaiming the death of painting. What makes it so enduring, in a world of video art and other installations? The death of painting thing has been taken too literally. It never died; it just had to learn to share the stage, and it’s become all the better for it. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some superb painters, here but also in the UK, the US and Germany. I suppose if there is a link between them all, it’s their shared exploration of painting’s constant, shifting balance between materiality and illusion.
You visited Stephen Bambury as he packed up his studio to move to a new one. What did you think of him and his artwork? Art and architecture are symbiotic in Stephen’s world so it was great to visit this space that had been especially adapted to produce his wonderful artworks. It’s immediately clear how much pleasure Stephen’s painting gives him. He and his daughter Nicola are a great double-act. After the interview we got on to the world’s problems and solved quite a few of them. I wish Stephen all the best out west.
You’ve just taken your family on holiday to Japan. What was the best part of your trip? The food! And Japanese service, which is so excellent. Everywhere you go they have great customer service, which simply makes you feel really good.
Which other New Zealand artists are you watching with interest at the moment? I’ve just finished writing a book about contemporary New Zealand art, so I’ve had my head pretty deep in this question for the last 18 months. Certain senior figures have anchored my thinking for a long time – Billy Apple, Judy Millar, Yvonne Todd, Peter Robinson. But I’m also super-excited by several younger artists. Simon Denny really is as important as the hype suggests. Shannon Te Ao, Luke Willis Thompson and Ruth Buchanan (p.88) are also fantastic. What interests me most is how their work proposes a generational way of seeing, and a politic, that I identify very strongly with.
You’re a writer not only for us, but of fiction too. How important is the space you work in? Does a space have the ability to make you work better? Maybe not better but different. My usual room with a view faces an Irish pub and a drag-queen cabaret and I like writing amid all that chaos. But last year I spent a few months on a writer’s residency on Waiheke Island, sitting at a long rimu table, looking out at The Noises and taking pictures of birds for my twitcher friend to identify, which was obviously pretty pleasant, too. What else are you working on at the moment? I am working on some fiction to do with what is happening to traditional media. Like climate change, I think journalism as we know it has reached a tipping point. It’s a perilous but fascinating time.
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Editor Jeremy Hansen Art Director Arch MacDonnell Inhouse Design Senior Designer Sarah Gladwell Inhouse Design
In the kitchen of a mid-century Wellington home by Frederick Ost. Photograph by Paul McCredie. More on p.76.
Senior Designer Oliver Worsfold Inhouse Design Designer Hamish Haydon Inhouse Design Senior Stylist/Designer Sam Smith Stylist/Designer Catherine Wilkinson Editorial Assistant Fiona Williams
Editorial Office Bauer Media Group Shed 12 City Works Depot 90 Wellesley St Auckland, New Zealand homenewzealand@ bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2739 Postal address HOME magazine Bauer Media Group Private Bag 92512 Wellesley Street Auckland 1141 New Zealand
Contributors Jo Bates Anthony Byrt Mary Gaudin Julie Hill Amelia Holmes Mark Kirby Penny Lewis Lucy Orbell
On our cover, a Wellington home with an illustrious past and an inspiring art collection. Photograph by Paul McCredie. For more, see p.76.
Photographers Kate Claridge Simon Devitt Steffen Jagenburg Russell Kleyn Paul McCredie Jackie Meiring Toaki Okano David Straight Jeremy Toth Simon Wilson
Chief Executive Officer Paul Dykzeul Publisher Brendon Hill Commercial Director Paul Gardiner Marketing Manager Martine Skinner Commercial Sales Manager Liezl Hipkins-Stear lhipkins@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2873 Advertising Account Manager Nicola Saunders nsaunders@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 366 5345 Classified Advertising Kim Chapman classifieds@xtra.co.nz +64 7 578 3646 Financial Business Analyst Ferozza Patel Group Production Manager Lisa Sloane Production Co-ordinator Clare Pike Advertising Auckland Liezl Hipkins-Stear lhipkins@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2873 Sydney Rachel McLean rmclean@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2760
Printer Webstar Distributor Netlink Distribution Company
HOME is subject to copyright in its entirety and the contents may not be reproduced in any form, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher. All rights reserved in material accepted for publication, unless initially specified otherwise. All letters and other material forwarded to the magazine will be assumed intended for publication unless clearly labelled “not for publication”. We welcome submissions of homes that architects or owners would like to be considered for publication. Opinions expressed in HOME New Zealand are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of Bauer Media Group. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. ABC average net circulation, April 2014 to March 2015: 10,795 copies. ISSN 1178-4148
Subscription Enquiries magshop.co.nz/home 0800 MAGSHOP or 0800 624 746 magshop@magshop.co.nz +64 9 308 2721 (tel) +64 9 308 2769 (fax) Bulk/Corporate Subscriptions corporates@magshop.co.nz +64 9 308 2700
19 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
AWAR D
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INTERIORS
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DESIGN
NEW YEAR NEW HUE 04
SHERBET SHADES MAKE FOR SWEET BEGINNINGS. 05
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01—Ceramic vase by Wundaire, $100 from Tur, turstudio.com 02—‘Essential Classic’ blanket by Kate & Kate, $149 from Let Liv, letliv.co.nz 03—‘Pleasure Garden (Two)’, 2015, oil on board (380x300mm) by Kirstin Carlin, $3500 from Melanie Roger Gallery, melanierogergallery.com 04—‘Bold’ rug by Hella Jongerius for Danskina, $4197 from Simon James Design, simonjamesdesign.com 05—‘Mago’ brooms by Stefano Giovannoni for Magis, from $87 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 06—Ceramic vase by Wundaire, $100 from Tur, turstudio.com 07—‘Bits and Bobs’ containers by Hay, from $30 from Cult, cultdesign.co.nz 08—‘Jellies Family’ glassware by Patricia Urquiola for Kartell, from $30 from Backhouse, backhousenz.com 09—‘Chandigarh’ sofa by Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien for Moroso, from $9200 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz. Edited by Amelia Holmes.
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SOFT TOUCH EASE INTO THE NEW YEAR WITH DESIGN ITEMS IN SOOTHING TONES.
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01—‘Dax’ chairs by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller, $2200 from Mr Bigglesworthy, mrbigglesworthy.co.nz 02—Ceramic necklace by Meighan Ellis, $120 from The Keep,
thekeep.co.nz
03—‘True Colour’ vase by Lex Pott for &Tradition, from $245 from Design Denmark, designdenmark.co.nz 04—‘Porter’ hat, $85 from I Love Ugly, iloveugly.co.nz
05—‘Half Grey Blue’ by Simon Morris (2015), acrylic on canvas (400x400mm), $3500 from Two Rooms, tworooms.co.nz 06—‘Mr Mini Penny’ bag by Deadly Ponies, $410 from
deadlyponies.com
07—‘Luna’ glass plate by Henry Dean, $199 from Citta Design, cittadesign.com 08—Wire basket, $350 from Weekend Trader, weekendtrader.net 09—‘Grand Piano’ sofa by Gubi Olsen for Gubi, $9,936 from Cult, cultdesign.co.nz. Edited by Amelia Holmes.
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NECESSARY DISTRACTION DESIGN ITEMS THAT PROMISE TO HOLD YOUR GAZE. 05
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01—Chair by John Crichton, $600 from Mr Bigglesworthy, mrbigglesworthy.co.nz 02—‘Time’ hourglass by Hay, $69 from Cult, cultdesign.co.nz 03—‘Formakami’ pendant light by Jamie Hayon for &Tradition, $245 from Design Denmark, designdenmark.co.nz 04—‘La Chamba’ bowl, $45 from French Country Collections, frenchcountry.co.nz 05—Boots by Maison Margiela, $1100 from Zambesi, zambesi.co.nz 06—Fur stole, $450 from Harman Grubiša, harmangrubisa.com 07—‘Running Red’ (2014) by Matt Arbuckle, oil on board (360x265mm), $1550 from Tim Melville Gallery, timmelville.com 08—‘Cloud Pouf’ by Luca Nichetto for &Tradition, from $3300 from Design Denmark, designdenmark.co.nz. Edited by Amelia Holmes.
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TROPICAL TOUCHES AN AUCKLAND EATERY COMBINES REGIONAL THAI CUISINE WITH AN INTERIOR BY CHESHIRE ARCHITECTS.
The crew behind Auckland’s Café Hanoi have teamed up with Cheshire Architects to create another alluring space. Saan combines a beautiful room with chef Lek Trirattanavatin’s delectable food, which hails from the Isaan and Lanna regions of Thailand. Just as in Café Hanoi, there’s a hint of the tropics in the light filtering through timber blinds, but the Cheshire team has dialled down the colour to a soft palette of neutrals with pale timber, wicker booths and ceramic pendants. It’s as if the interiors have been designed as a cool counterpoint to the wonderfully tasty food. SAAN 160 Ponsonby Road, Ponsonby, Auckland 09 320 4237 saan.co.nz Photography by David Straight.
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CAPITAL GAIN A WELLINGTON BOUTIQUE BRINGS A SWAG OF HIP INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL LABELS TO THE CITY.
Wellington’s Caughley is a new store in a building that once looked destined for the wrecking ball. The old venue on Ghuznee Street was closed for earthquake strengthening and had looked for a while like it may never reopen. Now it’s home to Caughley, a fashion boutique set up by Rachael Caughley who stocks international brands such as Gitman Vintage and local labels including Harman Grubiša. CAUGHLEY 57 Ghuznee Street, Te Aro, Wellington 04 384 4990
Photography by Russell Kleyn.
26 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
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POTTED HISTORY A NEW CERAMICS RANGE HAS HISTORICAL INSPIRATION.
A New Zealand artistic duo is paying tribute to a mysterious trailblazing ceramicist by creating new work that bears her name. Florence Kowhai Cunningham Weir is said to have been born in Christchurch in 1899 and became an interior designer who built her career in the UK. Now her memory is being honoured by artists Richard Orjis and Julia Holderness, who say they’ve produced works from Weir’s sketchbooks under the brand name Florence Weir. In 1926, they say Weir spent six months on a post-graduate visit to the Bauhaus workshops in Germany and may have been the only New Zealander to have studied there. They say she also worked as a textile designer alongside Frances Hodgkins at the Calico Printers’ Association in Manchester, UK. FLORENCE WEIR facebook.com/FlorenceWeir
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MUCKING IN AN AUCKLAND FLORIST AND CAFÉ ALSO SELLS HAPPENING HOMEWARE.
Florist Sophie Wolanski and baker and shopkeeper Carter Were’s design destination in the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn is big on locally sourced freshness and low on pretension. Wolanski prefers her bouquets to be ordered in advance to minimise wastage; her structured-but-natural aesthetic is also in demand as installations for events and photo shoots. Were’s sprouted bread is served as open sandwiches in Muck Floral and General’s small seating area or as takeaway; she also sells a winning range of hand-crafted homeware that is well worth a browse while you wait. MUCK FLORAL & GENERAL 480 Richmond Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland muck.co.nz Photography by Simon Wilson.
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Until 28 March ––– Free entry
James Cousins plate.303 (Arc) (detail) 2014 courtesy of the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery
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STEALTH SIMPLICITY AN ARCHITECT CREATES A PROTOTYPICAL HOLIDAY HOME THAT’S READY TO SHARE.
Architect Evelyn McNamara has spent a lot of time thinking about how big many holiday homes have become, and questioning if this is really necessary. Her answer is the simple-but-sleek holiday home she designed for herself on Waiheke Island: a 72-square-metre, two-bedroom getaway that works well for her and would also be entirely adequate for a family. Auckland-based McNamara designed the house not as a bespoke creation, but as a modular prototype that can be efficiently constructed on a range of sites, reducing design and build costs. The architect responded to the bush-clad Waiheke site by choosing dark cedar for the exterior and the internal walls at both ends of the home. Other walls and the floor are crisp white, in contrast to the black kitchen cabinetry and Corian benchtops. A central services area separates the bedrooms and living area and houses the laundry on one side and bathroom on the other. The plan’s symmetry was another helpful factor in keeping costs down.
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Rather than selecting sliding doors that completely disappear, McNamara opted for bi-fold doors by Altherm Window Systems, which stack neatly away when open and whose vertical lines offer a sense of enclosure when closed. The home’s view faces mostly south, but the interior also opens to a rear, north-facing deck that pulls in sun throughout the day. It’s the first project McNamara has designed for herself and she’s found being her own client educational and extremely fulfilling – so much so that she’s having trouble forcing herself to make the house available as a holiday rental. Now she’s created her own space, she quite understandably wants it all to herself.
01—The living area faces north and south. 02—Bi-fold doors open to the deck. 03—The home is a modest 72 square metres. 04—The main bedroom. 05— The kitchen includes a ‘Pi’ table by Roderick Fry.
EMA ARCHITECTS 09 215 9232 ema-architects.com 05
Photography by Jeremy Toth.
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CLASSIC LINES A NEW ZEALAND FASHION LABEL ALIGNS ITSELF WITH AN ARCHITECTURAL GEM.
It’s regarded as one of the finest works of architecture in the country, so of course it makes a wonderful backdrop for some immaculately cut clothes. The Brake House in the Auckland suburb of Titirangi was designed by architect Ron Sang for photographer Brian Brake in the late 1970s. Working Style, the 28-yearold firm that makes made-to-measure suits and a range of ready-to-wear items, recently photographed its 2016 autumn/winter collection there as part of its ongoing celebration of New Zealand architectural heritage. The home is a group of elegant, minimalist pavilions hovering in the forested hills. Sang, an Auckland-based architect, designed the home while Brake, an international photojournalist, was mostly abroad. The duo communicated via airmail, a process that could have gone badly awry in the wrong hands, but the elegance of the home shows how closely their aesthetic sensibilities were entwined. Sang’s design spans the gully that bisects the site. The sense of floating among the trees is especially magical in the home’s tatami room, a stylised tearoom that hovers above a cloud of magnolia trees. Its shape is mirrored by an outdoor seating area that extends off the living room, held aloft by a single pole. Working Style director Chris Dobbs says he chose the house as a location because his garments are designed to bridge the gap between work and play (a suit worn with suede trainers with a button-down shirt, for example), a combination of glamour and relaxation that the house embodies so well. But he’s also frank that he badly wanted to hang out there. “The 1970s was one of architecture’s most exciting decades, and this is one of the most impressive buildings from the era. It’s an amazing structure, so we loved having the opportunity to give the world a peek inside and share its story and heritage.”
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01—The tatami room in the Brake House overlooks the city. 02—A clerestory window illuminates the living area. 03—The seating area is held aloft by a single pole. 04, 05—Two views of the home’s entry bridge.
WORKING STYLE workingstyle.co.nz 05
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Photography by Mark Smith.
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FAIR TRADE AN AUCKLAND ART EVENT RETURNS WITH BIG NEW AMBITIONS.
The Auckland Art Fair returns this year under new management and scaled up for more public engagement with a move to The Cloud on Queen’s Wharf. The fair, held from May 25-29, will include works from most of New Zealand’s leading galleries (their participation is approved by a selection committee) including Bath Street Gallery, Michael Lett, Hopkinson Mossman, Two Rooms, Peter McLeavey, Hamish McKay, Anna Miles and many more (works from some of these galleries are shown on these pages). There will also be 10 international exhibitors from Melbourne, Sydney and Rarotonga.
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The fair is now under the management of North Port Events, a company that also runs events such as The Food Show. To launch the new rendition of the Auckland Art Fair, they’ve lured co-director Hayley White back from a role at Art International in Istanbul, and her colleague Stephanie Post is returning from London to create the event. They’re planning a series of projects around the site to expand displays beyond their immediate exhibition areas. Over time, the fair aims to become a fixture on the Asia-Pacific art circuit – and in the process expose New Zealand artists to a larger audience and more potential buyers. All of the works will be for sale, of course, presenting a rare opportunity to see what’s on offer from a huge range of galleries in a single stroll.
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01—A work by Yvonne Todd. Courtesy of Peter McLeavey Gallery and Russell Kleyn. 02—A work by Jennifer French. Courtesy of Trish Clark Gallery. 03—A work by Andrew Beck. Courtesy of Hamish McKay. 04—A work by Leigh Martin. Courtesy of Fox Jensen. 05—A work by Ry David Bradley. Courtesy of Tristian Koenig. 06—A work by Julian Dashper. Courtesy of Michael Lett. 07—A work by Yvonne Todd. Courtesy of Peter McLeavey Gallery and Russell Kleyn. 08—Selina Foote’s ‘Mary’. Courtesy of Two Rooms. 09—Yvonne Todd’s ‘Sand Forms’. Courtesy of Peter McLeavey Gallery and Russell Kleyn. 10—A work by Coen Young. Courtesy of Fox Jensen.
AUCKLAND ART FAIR The Cloud Road, Queen’s Wharf, Auckland artfair.co.nz
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01—‘Red and Blue’ armchair by Gerrit Rietveld for Cassina, $4900 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 02—‘Make Something’ shelves by Toby Curnow and Sam Haughton for
Make Something, $5060 from IMO, imo.co.nz 03—‘Dalilips’ sofa by Salvador Dali for BD Barcelona, $5500 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 04—‘Platner’ armchair in 18k gold by Warren Platner for Knoll, $14,900 from Studio Italia, studioitalia.co.nz 05—‘To Russia with Love’ rug by Jan Kath, $24,150 from Artisan Flooring, artisanflooring. co.nz 06—‘Carpentry’ wall light by Lee Broom, $16,165 from ECC, ecc.co.nz 07— ‘Stack 13’ drawer by Raw Edges and Shay Alkalay for Established & Sons, $14,899 from Simon James Design, simonjamesdesign.com 08—‘Float’ sofa by Karim Rashid for Sancal, POA from UFL, ufl.co.nz. Edited by Sam Smith.
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CRAFTED BY THE MASTERS WE LOOK TO THE GREATS FOR SHOW-STOPPING CLASSIC DESIGN PIECES. 01
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01—‘Bibendum’ chair by Eileen Gray for Classicon, $9568 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 02—‘Leda’ chair in solid cast brass by Salvador Dali for BD Barcelona, $39,000 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 03—Walnut stool by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller, $1755 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 04—‘Blue Marine’ rug by Eileen Gray for Classicon, POA from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 05—‘Lewis’ table by Frank Lloyd Wright for Cassina, $6100 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 06—‘Valentina C’ armchair by Maurizio Galante for Baleri Italia, $10,635 from Backhouse, backhousenz.com 07—‘Eden King’ rug by Marcel Wanders for Moooi, $4460 from ECC, ecc.co.nz 08—‘E1027’ tables by Eileen Gray for Classicon, $2105 each from Matisse, matisse.co.nz 09—‘La Chaise’ by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra, $11,400 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz. Edited by Sam Smith.
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MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRY
Designed for the modern laundry, Fisher & Paykel SmartDrive™ washing machines and matching dryers not only look great but also offer large capacity, easy installation, robust construction and high performance. Best of all, your laundry can now look as
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beautiful as the rest of your home.
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BATHROOMS 06
BUFF AND POLISH LARGE AND SMALL ITEMS FOR ONE OF THE HOME’S MOST IMPORTANT SPACES. 05
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01—‘Maru’ mirror by Ladies & Gentleman studio, $420 from Douglas and Bec, douglasandbec.com 02—‘Abito’ basin by Hatria for Michel César, $815 from Michel César, michelcesar.co.nz 03—‘Classic Example’ shower by Perrin & Rowe, $2114 from In Residence, inres.co.nz 04—Hinoki tissue box, $109 from Everyday Needs, everydayneeds. co.nz 05—‘Art Deco’ towel warmer by Hawthorn Hill, $3990 from In Residence, inres.co.nz 06—‘Vetyver Bergamot’ soap by Ingrid Starnes, $20 from Tessuti, tessuti.co.nz 07—‘Marvel Pro’ marble-look tiles, $109.50 per m² from Tile Space, tiles.co.nz 08—Body brush by Iris Hantverk, $57 from Everyday Needs, everydayneeds.co.nz 09—‘All Circle’ stool by Douglas and Bec, $390 from Douglas and Bec, douglasandbec.com 10—‘Cuna’ bath by Patricia Urquiola for Agape, from $12,800 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz Edited by Sam Smith.
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MOODE
BY
WHERE BATHROOMS, LAUNDRIES & TILES COME TOGETHER BEAUTIFULLY CHRISTCHURCH: 86 WIGRAM ROAD T 03 343 0969 F 03 343 0967 AUCKLAND: 4-8 ACE PLACE, KINGSLAND T 09 309 9109 F 09 309 9343 WWW.MICHELCESAR.CO.NZ
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01—‘PHC’ freestanding basin, $8500, and ‘Liquid’ floor-mounted spout, $3000, both by Piero Lissoni for Boffi, boffi.co.nz 02—‘Earth Elements’ scent diffuser by Tom Dixon, $99 from Simon James Concept Store and ECC, simonjamesdesign.com, ecc.co.nz 03—‘Uni’ showerhead by CRS Boffi, $2825 from Boffi, boffi.co.nz 04—‘Bath’ toothbrush holder by Menu, $103 from Simon James Concept Store, simonjamesdesign.com 05—‘Les Secrets d’Antoine’ liquid soap, $34.50 from Tessuti, tessuti.co.nz 06—‘Rex’ bath sheet by Missoni, $225 from Tessuti, tessuti.co.nz 07— ‘A45’ basin by Victor Vasilev for Boffi, $3485, with ‘A45’ board, $660, both from Boffi, boffi.co.nz 08—‘Shortcut’ towel holder by Nendo for Boffi, from $725 from Boffi, boffi.co.nz 09—‘Immerge’ freestanding bath, $1795 from VCBC, vcbc.co.nz 10—‘KaschKasch’ floor mirror by Menu, $756 from Simon James Concept Store, simonjamesdesign.com 11—‘Riverstone’ tile in graphite, $49.50 per m² from Tile Space, tiles.nz. Edited by Sam Smith.
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HOME + CORIAN
VERSATILITY AT ITS FINEST A SLICK APARTMENT BATHROOM REMINDS US THAT GERMAN KITCHENS AND CORIAN® ARE PERFECT FOR MORE THAN JUST KITCHENS.
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Designer Damian Hannah of German Kitchens says his clients wanted a contemporary bathroom to fit the look of their Wellington apartment but the L-shaped bathroom with doors at each end was spatially challenging. Working within these constraints to enhance a harmonious visual aspect for his clients was Damian’s first design consideration. Extensive use of large tiles made for a minimalistic finish, with fewer grout joins to lessen the angular aspects of the dog-legged room. The warm grey of the tiles is offset by rough-sawn Nordic timber elements and a crisp white Corian® vanity to match the white bathroomware. Damian specified Corian® 810 vanity basins to seamlessly integrate with the Corian® Glacier White vanity top. The ability to customise Corian®, coupled with its sleek aesthetics and durability, made it the perfect choice for this bathroom. A sense of space was created by suspending the vanity, with accent lighting underneath,
and installing a large, recessed wall mirror with task lighting down each side. The windowless room with no natural or borrowed light meant that Damian had to create three separate circuits for task, accent and mood lighting. The tiled shower wing walls incorporate top accent lighting to bounce light off the ceiling, while the recesses inside the shower are lit for mood and task lighting. Damian also designed the kitchen and ensuite, both of which feature Corian® Glacier White, ensuring consistency of the total aesthetic in the apartment.
Above Lighting was a major aspect of the design: Damian solved the lack of natural light with a clever accent and mood lighting system. Above left The ability to customise meant that Corian® was the perfect choice for a bathroom with such specific spatial requirements.
B:03
BATHROOMS
LOFTY ROOM, RICH PALETTE THE LUXURY OF SPACE AFFORDS AN ELEGANT ENSUITE, AS WELL AS HIS-AND-HERS AREAS.
BATHROOM
BRIEF
Main ensuite
Storage, space and an aesthetic to suit the home’s architecture. The bathroom was designed by interior designer Sonja Hawkins.
DESIGNER
Sonja Hawkins PHOTOGRAPHY
Simon Devitt LOCATION
Auckland
How was the process of designing your own ensuite and dressing room? SONJA HAWKINS I try to think beyond the predictable and, being my own client, I didn’t have to ‘sell’ my ideas. A bathroom doesn’t have to be what is expected, but this can require the luxury of space. I usually start with a product or material I love and build from there. In this case it was the bath and the Bisazza mosaics, which were at the forefront of my mind when I designed the solid nib wall and wrapped them into the shower and toilet. I used different colours in each space for effect. I love the result. What was the feel and aesthetic you wanted to achieve? We have a beautiful symmetry at the end of the house, with three sets of French doors and corner windows, which I didn’t want to break up. In a sense it’s a loft style, being high above ground and open plan. I then used timber flooring to enhance that aesthetic. Can you please talk us through your choice of materials? They appear lovely and warm, rather than clinical. Was that important for you? I am of the anti-allwhite school, which is too safe and cold. I also feel the cold, so a warm aesthetic was crucial. The timber flooring and wall panelling play a big role in this, then it’s the use of colour. I love natural materials, too, so stone often plays a part in my bathrooms and the Bisazza tiles are fantastic, adding texture to the overall space. Talk us through the rationale of the standalone basin, which is in the dressing room and outside the bathroom proper. I’ve essentially created ‘his’ and ‘her’ spaces, with shared amenities in the middle. The standalone basin, while for hand washing, is my husband’s shaving stand within his dressing room. On ‘her’ side I’ve created a modern take on the dressing table.
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Bath and basin ‘Vieques’ by Patricia Urquiola from Matisse. Curtains Prestige CMT Interiors. Flooring CTC Timber Floors. Lighting ‘Bell Decanterlight’ pendants by Lee Broom from ECC. Mirrors ‘Strap’ mirror by Hay Studios from Cult. Stone Trethewey Stone. Stool ‘Offcut’ stool by Tom Dixon from ECC. Tapware and bath spout ‘Vola’ by Arne Jacobsen from Metrix. Tiles Bisazza from Tile Space. Timber cabinetry Bremich Cabinetmakers. Towel rail Hawthorn Hill in brass from In Residence. Vanity Bremich Cabinetmakers. WC ‘Happy D’ by Duravit from Metrix. Artwork Photograph by Roberta Thornley from Tim Melville Gallery. For a floor plan of this bathroom and more of this home by Andrew Patterson with interiors by Sonja Hawkins, see p.100.
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B:04
TALL, DARK AND HANDSOME ADJOINING A BEDROOM DRESSED IN BLACK, THIS ENSUITE IN A COMPLEX BUILD IS EQUALLY STRIKING. BATHROOM
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ensuite in a home at Pakiri, north of Auckland
Simon Devitt
ARCHITECT
BRIEF
Paul Clarke, Studio2 Architects
A striking, low-maintenance black ensuite
LOCATION
Pakiri
Is there a particular fixture or fitting that was the starting point or inspiration for the bathroom’s design? SCOTT LAWRIE, HOMEOWNER The black tiles, which I fell in love with. While these hexagon tiles look beautiful, they were fiddly to install into such an unusual and tall wall. Was there a rationale to making this bathroom different from the home’s other bathroom, which is white? My bedroom is black, so I wanted to create a seamless continuity. The other bathroom is stand-alone and has a more traditional look for guests. Personality traits you identified for your house in our October/November 2015 issue were primordial, invisibly brilliant and beautiful. This bathroom captures those traits. Yes, I think so. People are scared of using black for interiors – but you just have to be confident and go for it. It can be incredibly powerful and a lot warmer than people think. Lighting design was very carefully considered, given the dark space. You mentioned the angles in the room made it tricky to install the shower glass. Did the glass installer say a few choice words during the process? The plumber had fun fitting the toilet to the wall. The glass installer had fun, too, as the rear wall is on a three-degree angle, not to mention the plasterboard chap and the tiler! But I think they’re all very proud of it.
Basin Philippe Starck for Duravit from Metrix. Floor Polished concrete. Lighting Inlite. Shower glass HomePlus Rodney. Showerhead Paini from Metrix. Storage Matakana Kitchens & Joinery. Tapware Paini ‘Cox’ wall-mounted mixer and wall-mounted arm from Metrix. Tiles ‘Queen Vic’ from Jacobsens. Towel rail Metrix. Vanity Steel paint over MDF from Matakana Kitchens & Joinery. WC ‘Starck 2’ by Philippe Starck for Duravit from Metrix.
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B:05
ZEN AND THE ART OF SHOWERING THE RENOVATION OF A FORMER STATE HOUSE OPENS UP TO NATURE WITH A DESIGN THAT EMBRACES THE OUTDOORS. BATHROOM
LOCATION
Glass ensuite
Westmere, Auckland
DESIGNER
BRIEF
Paul Clarke, Studio2 Architects
Ensuite with glasswalled shower in renovated state house for Drew McGuire.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jackie Meiring
Drew, we understand the glass walledshower was your idea and you briefed Paul accordingly? Tell us about the inspiration for this unconventional idea? DREW MCGUIRE I grew up in a bungalow, but across the road from us was this unbelievably cool house designed by the Group Architects. The other house I loved was an A-frame. I was fascinated by them. I remember they had floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a sense of connection to the garden and bringing the outside in. We all pretty much want indoor-outdoor flow. Paul – what was your reaction to Drew’s brief for a glass-walled shower in a suburban environment? PAUL CLARKE I thought it was a great idea with the creation of a private, Zen-like garden. Drew, what do you enjoy about your bathroom? DM I enjoy the connection to the garden and looking out to the ligularia, cycads, nikau palms and ferns. It’s like a lush oasis in a suburban environment. The planting was done with the shower in mind, after the renovation.
Are there any drawbacks to its revealing design? No concerns, really, unless the neighbours decide to build up. I know the neighbours and we have lots of laughs about it. They’ve been over here and I’ve been over there to see what can be seen. The shower isn’t visible from their two lounges. I keep threatening to put in a magnifying strip. But I may put a film on the glass when their kids can bounce a bit higher on the trampoline. What do first-time visitors say when they see it? The reactions are sensational. Everyone squeals with laughter, no matter what age. I did this for the fun factor.
Basin and WC Duravit. Shower tray Custom stainless steel. Shower walls Toughened glass from Euroglass. Tapware Paini ‘Cox’. Towel rail DCS. Vanity Custom stainless steel.
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B:06
VARIETY AND CONTINUITY A HOMEOWNER-DESIGNER CREATES A RELAXED BUT FUN SPACE FOR HER CHILDREN’S BATHROOM. BATHROOM
LOCATION
Children’s bathroom
Auckland
DESIGNER
BRIEF
Sonja Hawkins
A bathroom that adds variety as well as continuity.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Simon Devitt
Aren’t you scared of the bathrooms in your house having different ‘looks’ from each other? Could you please explain why variety is good, rather than everything being matchy-matchy? SONJA HAWKINS A room generally serves an individual, or individuals and, as such, should suit their needs. The kids’ bathrooms had to be more relaxed and a bit of fun. Bathrooms can be different, but they must have continuity to work. All the children’s bathrooms are the same, and I used the same timber, tapware and toilets as in the master and guest suite. They tie in as a whole by repeating the timber in the kitchen and steel work in the cabinet frames and surrounds. The wall tile also replays in the kitchen and scullery so, yes, different but connected. Individuality is what gives a home personality, and the personality of the occupants make it a home. What idea or material was the catalyst for this bathroom design? I discovered the white tiles by Dtile overseas and knew they’d be perfect. They have a slightly retro look and cool tiles to create the curved nib walls and vanities. I had it brought in from the Netherlands. As far as I know, it’s the only installation here. I also imported the artisan-made Moroccan floor tiles, which have a beautiful handmade quality. The range is fun, colourful and stunning. What are your tips for choosing grout colour? It depends if you want the grid effect to stand out, or to be more uniform. I wanted a subtle grid and the soft grey grout ties in with the floors. Sometimes a coloured grout can be chaotic. The parity of white and stone make the space tranquil and seamless, and enhance the sculptural qualities of the architecture. The same materials are present in the garden, strongly linking the two areas. Cabinetry Bremich Cabinetmakers. Floor tiles Popham (imported from Morocco). Tapware ‘Vola’ by Arne Jacobsen from Metrix. Towel rail Hawthorn Hill in brass from In Residence. Towels Corso De’ Fiori and Country Road. Vanity Bremich Cabinetmakers. Wall tiles DTile (imported from the Netherlands). For more on this house, see p.100.
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B:07
BAY-WATCH BEAUTY THIS BATHROOM MAKES THE MOST OF ITS VIEWS AND TAKES COLOUR CUES FROM ITS BAY OF ISLANDS SETTING.
BATHROOM
LOCATION
Beach house ensuite
Bay of Islands
DESIGNER
BRIEF
Bossley Architects
Capitalise on views in this new Bay of Islands holiday home
PHOTOGRAPHY
Simon Devitt
This is the main ensuite in a large holiday home, which has several bathrooms. How have you made it different from the others? PETER SISAM, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, BOSSLEY ARCHITECTS This bathroom is the only one situated to take advantage of the view out to the bay, while also offering direct access onto the grassed area in front.
The bath is on a jaunty angle. Is that to reflect the geometry employed in the house design? This angle picks up on the geometries used elsewhere in the design but allows the bath to take good advantage of the view. How were the coloured bath and shower tiles chosen? Blue, red and orange coloured tiles are used throughout all the bathrooms. They pick up on different elements of the site; sea colour, beach sand, site clay and the pohutukawa flower. The bathroom includes a bench seat (not visible in this photo). What is the rationale behind it? It extends out to the view and provides a place for towels when bathing. The bench seat continues outside and provides a place to sit in the morning sun for the first coffee of the day.
Basin, vanity and bath ‘Palomba’ by Laufen from Reece Plumbing. Bench seat Stained American oak. Ceiling European poplar plywood, installed by Lindesay Construction. Floor tiles Porcelain from Tile Warehouse. Lighting Delta from Inlite. Tapware ‘Meta 02’ by Dornbracht from Metrix. Towel rail DCS heated rail from Metrix. Wall tiles ‘Vixel’ glass mosaics from Artedomus. WC ‘Starck 1’ by Philippe Starck for Duravit from Metrix.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 49
Inside artist Stephen Bambury’s Auckland studio. For more, see p.62. Photograph by Jeremy Toth.
P RE S E NT E D BY
IN STUDIO NEW ARTWORKS AND CREATIVE SPACES
P:01 FOUR PAINTERS
IMOGEN TAYLOR Bold and fearless, this progressive painter presents pure talent in work that’s informed by both local art history and gender theory. TEXT
— Anthony Byrt
Imogen Taylor is just 30 years old, but has already had the kind of impact on New Zealand painting that Rohan Wealleans (who she once shared a studio with) made when he emerged in the early 2000s. Taylor’s work shares Wealleans’ abrasive energy – filled with humour and toughness and sex and, above all, pure talent. Her fearless approach serves as a welcome antidote for much of the ‘pretty’ painting being made in New Zealand right now, which so often feels more like pages torn from adult colouring books than genuine attempts to push the medium forward. Taylor’s paintings, by contrast, are progressive, confrontational, and heavily informed both by local art histories and gender
theory. She often works on hessian, in a clear nod to Tony Fomison and Philip Clairmont, and her abstract forms pay simultaneous homage to Colin McCahon in his French Bay phase and the Orphism of Sonia Delaunay. And yet those same forms also double as body parts, imprinting a layer of charged sexuality on her surfaces. It’s a unique mash-up that brushes aside conservative ideas about good versus bad painting, or prettiness versus ugliness, or figuration versus abstraction. Taylor’s works become all of these things at the same time – as so much of New Zealand’s most important painting (Fomison, for example, or McCahon at his 60s and 70s best) does, too.
Above Installation view, Artspace, 2015. Photograph by Samuel Hartnett. Left ‘Still Life’, 2015, oil on hessian (637x 537mm framed). Far left ‘Pelvic Floors’, 2014, acrylic on jute (1600x1300mm). All images courtesy of the artist and Michael Lett.
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P:02 FOUR PAINTERS
KIM PIETERS A multi-disciplinary artist with an in-depth appreciation of European philosophy, Pieters’ work takes an expansive view. TEXT
— Anthony Byrt
Dunedin-based Kim Pieters has always been a difficult artist to categorise, in part because she works across several mediums – painting, sound, photography and video (she’s been a key person in Dunedin’s experimental music scene for a long time). But some big presentations of late – most notably a solo exhibition at Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery in 2014, beautifully curated by Christina Barton – have shown that she deserves serious attention. Pieters’ paintings are at the heart of her multi-layered practice. She starts with decidedly unpromising substrates – old bits of hardboard, often punctured with nail holes or broken at their edges. She then profoundly
transforms them, building up delicate monochromes in thin layers. After that, she doodles on these surfaces, offering up odd, interior little scratchings and phrases that force us close, so that we climb inside the painting’s frame with her. These subtle, inbuilt contradictions embody the tension at the heart of Pieters’ thinking: her poetic impulse on the one hand, and her hardcore interest in European philosophy on the other. But, as her paintings show, the leap isn’t as great as we might assume – both examine how we might explore and expand the borders between our bodies, minds and the objects we encounter in the world. It’s what Pieters has described as a “transcendental empiricism”.
Clockwise from far left ‘The Constitution Act 1852’, 2015 (1715x 895mm); ‘The Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967’, 2015 (1120x 895mm); ‘The Maori Affairs Act 1953’, 2015 (1070x900mm); ‘The New Zealand Settlements Act 1863’, 2015, two panels (1085x2380mm). All mixed media on board. All images courtesy of the artist and Nadene Milne Gallery.
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P:03 FOUR PAINTERS
KIRSTIN CARLIN Hidden messages seem to hop from painting to painting in this artist’s exploration of a deliberately tight format. TEXT
— Anthony Byrt
In Kirstin Carlin’s paintings, it’s the details that matter. Not her specific subjects or the particularities of the paint she uses, but the literal ‘details’ – those intense close-ups we’re used to seeing in art history books in which the totality of an image dissolves into a handful of brush strokes. Painting is peculiarly vulnerable to this kind of fetishistic peering because of its constant bounce between materiality and illusion. Carlin’s work is all about this perceptive shift. At first glance, she is guilty of all sorts of conservative tendencies. She paints landscapes and flowers again and again. They’re almost always the same domestically scaled format – about 400x300mm. It’s a
Sunday painter-ish set-up that puts her into a very tight corner. But she fights her way out with a near-psychedelic strangeness: weird mauves, pinks and greens that never quite match her subject matter. The blacks and browns she uses as outlining devices morph into hieroglyphs; hidden messages that seem to hop from painting to painting. There’s a richness both in Carlin’s approach to material (all that oil, all that colour) and her thinking: the more we see from her, the more a clear project emerges – an ongoing attempt to make sense of painting’s productive, ambiguous space between representation and material indulgence.
Clockwise from far left ‘Pleasure Garden (Two)’, 2015; ‘Pleasure Garden (Four)’, 2015; ‘Pleasure Garden (Five)’, 2015; ‘Pleasure Garden (Ten)’, 2015; ‘Pleasure Garden (Thirteen)’, 2015; ‘Pleasure Garden (Fifteen)’, 2015. All oil on board (380×300mm). All images courtesy of the artist and Melanie Roger Gallery.
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P:04 FOUR PAINTERS
STELLA CORKERY The improvisational, vibrant energy that Corkery applies to her musical practise is also extended to her painting. TEXT
— Anthony Byrt
Stella Corkery, like Kim Pieters, comes from an experimental-music background. It’s only recently that she has come to prominence as a painter, having been included in major exhibitions at the Auckland Art Gallery such as Necessary Distraction (open until March 28, 2016, and in which Kirstin Carlin and Kim Pieters also feature). Corkery’s paintings walk a fine line between irony and expressionism: between a genuine desire to get deep with her materials while also recognising that paintings, in contemporary life, are yet more visual noise – reproducible images adrift on the ocean of media culture. Following in the footsteps of painters such as Josh Smith and Albert Oehlen, her approach isn’t to retreat
Above ’Helmet’, 2015, oil on canvas (1500x1800mm). Right ‘Ruffles, Bonnet, Dynamite’, 2015, oil on canvas (760x610mm).
from this image bombardment but to contribute to it, banging out painting after painting. She makes her paintings with the same improvisatory energy as her music – punky, free form, loose. Like any jam session, this throws up plenty of failures, but occasionally some real gems. The challenge of Corkery’s practise is the way those ‘failed’ moments achieve parity with the more objectively ‘good’ stuff. In one exhibition, for example, she slammed viewers with around 40 paintings rather than editing down to the absolute best. It doesn’t always make for easy viewing, but it does capture a zeitgeisty energy, and gives the old “painting is dead” argument a new spin in a post-internet world.
Top right ‘I Haven’t Been Anywhere or Seen Anyone’, 2015, oil on canvas (1250x1000m). Top, far right ‘Untitled (sweepers)’, 2015, oil on canvas (1300x940mm). All images courtesy of the artist and Michael Lett.
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S:01 IN STUDIO
STILL LIVES The late Julian Dashper’s fascinating Auckland studio, with its neat arrangements of art and ephemera, remains just as he left it when he died in 2009. TEXT
— Mark Kirby
PHOTOG RAPHY
— Toaki Okano
Left A work table in the studio’s front room holds tools, pencils and notepads, as well as Dashper’s art works and other objects.
I was moved when I first saw these photographs of my friend Julian Dashper’s suburban west Auckland studio. Julian, an acclaimed artist, died in 2009, but his partner, Marie Shannon, has changed little about the studio since. The immaculate arrangements of objects on tables are exactly as Julian left them. It looks as if he has just popped out for a moment. Marie, who shared the studio with Julian, says his process of arranging things on tables began gradually, as his practice developed and he increasingly had works made by fabricators, or used existing, manufactured objects. The arrangements were a combination of functional objects and materials, such as the pencils and notepads, and things he might be considering as potential art works, such as stacks of flat paint brushes or musical triangles in descending sizes. “He might place some of his own small art works that he was thinking about, or considering in a new context. Therefore his studio time was thinking time, and time to look at objects and shapes in relation to each other,” Marie says.
I knew this building long before Julian moved there. When I was young it was my local post office. My mother used to buy things there: wool, presents for us kids, and our school stationery. I remember buying a toy boat there once. The women who worked in that shop knew my family by name. Then it became a hair salon. Over time this shop and the neighbouring butcher, green grocer and supermarket closed; eventually, in 1998, Julian made it his studio. He and I used to discuss this weird coincidence when I visited him there, surrounded by artworks, books and archives. The conflation of my memories as a child with those of Julian and this studio makes viewing these photographs particularly poignant for me. Julian liked to say that he was an international artist working out of New Zealand. He insisted that didn’t have to be located in the mainstream centres of Western art, like New York or Europe (and, these days, Asia), to be at the centre of contemporary practice. It was interesting how he so effectively acted out
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 57
The exterior of the 1950s concrete-block studio building, which was formerly a suburban post office, then a hair salon.
this form of internationalism from a modest suburban Auckland studio. While the notion of ‘centre’ these days has become dispersed, in large part due to the influences of contemporary media, for some time Julian’s eccentric approach to internationalism made him unique in New Zealand art. He seemed to have a higher profile everywhere other than New Zealand. He wasn’t fashionable here, even though his reputation extended across Europe, the UK, USA and Australia. Julian didn’t mind this conundrum, as it sharpened his critique of New Zealand art and the introspective nature of a lot of contemporary New Zealand culture, which he thought was overtly nationalistic. Julian refused to work according to the traditional regionalist paradigms of New Zealand art. You can see clues to this in his work and references to the many artists he admired. Because of this, Julian was sometimes misunderstood in his homeland. The hard-edged internationalism and intellectualism of his work was
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too clever for some, and he was considered too smug by far. Julian didn’t mind this. In fact, he considered criticism such as this to be part of his work, and embedded it into his practice: he once republished the complete set of negative reviews from a New Zealand Herald critic in the catalogue-cum-artwork Reviews… he loves me not (2002). Julian sometimes preferred to make New Zealand art one of the core subjects of his artwork. His unique form of regionalism came through strongly in ‘The Big Bang Theory’ (1992), a series of five full-size drum kits emblazoned with the names of canonical modernist New Zealand painters: Colin McCahon, Don Driver, Rita Angus, Ralph Hotere and Toss Woollaston. His Darwinian homage to these artists is now recognised as a significant moment in New Zealand art history, and part of the canon of late 20th-century New Zealand art. The fastidiousness of Julian’s studio is reflective of how he meticulously choreographed where and
Top left Tools and paint brushes arranged on a bench in the studio kitchen. Above Framed art works and a work table in the back room. Above left Dashper used his work tables as places to consider objects that might become art works. “The tables weren’t completely static,” says Marie Shannon. “Objects would be removed and replaced from time to time – but they would change gradually.”
when his work was shown. This was most obvious in 1992 when he ‘exhibited’ an advertisement he placed in Artforum International. Most people were astute enough to recognise the fundamental cleverness of his intervention and its critique of how context – in this case, being included in an important critical magazine – imbues artistic credibility. In this case the artwork was not so much the image Julian had placed in Artforum, but the chatter that it stimulated. ‘Untitled (The Warriors)’ (1998) worked in a similar way when first shown at the time of the Sydney Biennale. This small-scale, almost toy-like drum kit offered a metaphor for New Zealand identity: a shy, uncertain and self-consciously small-framed child trying to be heard among the bigger boys of international art. No ‘big bang’ here. The evident humour, as well as the cultural cringe it implied, was indicative of Julian’s rigour and unwillingness to suffer fools caught up within nationalistic theories of art and culture. The references in this work to the Warriors rugby league
team (of which Julian was an avid fan), perhaps the most working-class of all sports, were as much a critique of art’s pretentiousness as an assertion of the rich connections between cultural activities distanced only by class. Julian’s drum-based works, such as ‘Untitled (The Warriors)’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’, were indicative of an ongoing conversation with popular music in his artwork. This most clearly came through in a plethora of recorded performances, produced as polycarbonate records, which he would display on the wall in the manner of abstract paintings. The recordings were often of events or performances held within his exhibitions. In ‘Blue Circles #1-#8’ (2002-03) Julian displayed eight beautifully transparent polycarbonate LP recordings of incidental noise captured in front of Jackson Pollock’s 1952 icon of modernist painting, ‘Blue Poles [Number 11]’, which had been purchased in some clamour and controversy by the National Gallery of Australia in 1973.
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Above left Empty wine bottles used to make the editioned work, ‘Painting in a Bottle’. Above right The work area in the front room contains tools for cutting and packing.
In a similar way, in several series, Julian inverted the relationship between painting and photography, at one time reproducing multiple painted portraits of a single unique photograph. In these works the multiple paintings are indistinguishable, making it impossible to privilege one as more unique than any other. He also played with reproduction and originality in ‘Untitled Slides’ (1991) where he displayed, in the manner of painting, a series of slide sheets containing images of original art works. The beautiful gridded symmetry of these works was a deliberate reference to the geometric abstraction of 20th-century modernism, particularly minimalist art, in which Julian was particularly interested. Julian also conflated abstract and realist art. In fact he argued that abstract art could never be abstract, and that all art represented something. What is always ‘represented’ in art, of course, are the contexts and values of art itself. Abstract art was a primary subject of representation for Julian. He said he ‘made’
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abstract art, as tradesman might craft a chair, and that what he made was abstract art because it looked like abstract art. I have written previously that Julian’s art work is as beautiful to think about as it is to look at. His position was that art should be both visually and intellectually interesting. Julian was interested in aesthetics as a subject, and would often play with the notion of beauty. This is perhaps most evident in his ‘Untitled’ (1996) series of paintings on drumheads. These beautiful circles of colour, which mimic Jasper Johns, Kenneth Noland and other mid-20th century abstract artists, saw Julian receive much acclaim as a colourist. However, it was not Julian but Leo, his toddler son, who had selected the colours for each painting. Here, irony, humour and intellect are conflated with elegance and beauty. And here, in this work and these photographs of his fascinating studio, is where you can find the essence and richness of the art of my late good friend.
A plaster cast of Dashper’s head, made in preparation for radiation therapy, sits beside a framed poster from his 2007 exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu and in front of an empty stretcher for a painting.
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Stephen Bambury in the warehouse studio he’s worked in for 20 years.
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S:02 IN STUDIO
A CROSS TO BEAR Despite a year of legal action and the loss of his beloved studio, artist Stephen Bambury is charging on.
TEXT
— Julie Hill
PHOTOG RAPHY
It could be that he’s working on one of his cross paintings, but there is something reverential about ascending the stairs to the top floor of Stephen Bambury’s bright, white studio in Eden Terrace, Auckland, as if at any moment angels will appear. Rain is thrumming on the rooftop and a jazz record is playing as Bambury, with the help of his daughter Nicola, applies 16-carat gold leaf to each of the seven panels of the painting. After a hot, clammy morning, it’s cooler now, which means he has a short window to do the work – “if you miss it, you can’t get it on”, he says of the gold leaf. For 40 years, in a career that has taken him to the United States, Europe and Asia, Bambury has explored painting as an “experiential exchange”, creating and recreating the symbols of square, circle and cross – not just in its religious sense but as a reference to the cross of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist art movement, and Colin McCahon’s Tau Cross.
— Jeremy Toth
His technical investigations have redefined the idea of painting, incorporating precious and non-precious metals, chemical patinas, timbers, even rust. He has also produced photography and screen prints, and satiates an abiding love of architecture with site-specific work. His neighbours here include a printer, an electrician, makers of “some sort of defensive equipment” and, today at least, a semi-alright rock band. At one end of the room is a garden of succulents and along one wall there is a cupboard stuffed with pigments, brushes, and all manner of gadgets and potions, like a medieval alchemist’s laboratory. Despite a yawning 6000 square feet, Bambury says he sometimes finds the studio too cramped. “I spend so much of my life in here, so I really want it to be a place I can come to. I can cook here, I’ve got music, it’s really nice to be in. I’ve had a lot of studios over the years and it’s such a luxury, it helps so much to have a space like this.” It wasn’t always so glorious. When he moved in, the lower floor had been leased out to cabinetmakers, while
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Above Work benches are covered in the diverse tools and materials that Bambury uses in his work, including resins and pigments. The natural light that the artist desired for his workspace floods in through the skylight and door. Right The studio’s upper level was designed by Bambury’s friend, the architect Pip Cheshire, while Pip’s son Nat Cheshire designed the lower level, which includes machinery, screen-printing equipment, materials and crate storage. The symbols Bambury has worked with throughout his career, such as the cross, can be seen in the artworks on the studio’s walls and floor.
upstairs, a clothing manufacturer had been using it as a cutting floor. “It was just block walls, a raw tin roof, like something out of a Dickens story,” Bambury says. He asked his old friend, surfing buddy and co-philosophiser Pip Cheshire to design the upstairs level. “The brief for Pip was that I wanted organic light, and I wanted light that shifted on a daily basis, an annual basis, a monthly basis.” He says he “feels” colour, that it is almost a form of synaesthesia. “Seeing is so complex: one of our most present faculties and perhaps the most overlooked because of its presentness. It’s not a question of the purity of a colour but of the experience of colour. This experience is particular to painting and what I want to share.” Pip’s son Nat designed the lower level, a warren of installation crates, records, machinery, screen-printing equipment and chairs with the arms bitten off by the Bambury whippet. Big roller doors open up to the street. Where the upstairs space is calm and contemplative,
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with a library of about 3000 books, down here is where the messy stuff happens: chemical processing, sawing. The Cheshires’ admiration of Bambury’s talent is matched only by his of theirs. “I’m often more interested in talking to architects than a lot of artists. They’re more generous. They deal with clients so they have to have a more robust attitude and perhaps not be too precious about it. I don’t know why people go to a Gothic cathedral and thank God. They should be thanking the architect.” The separation of home and work is important to Bambury. As a student at Elam art school, a lot of his peers painted in their back gardens. “But I knew I had to make a huge effort to get out of that pattern. At the beginning I was living and working in Titirangi but I got depressed, I didn’t like it. You’ve got to go to work.” Last year was a hectic and sometimes tortuous year in the artist’s life. In October, at the conclusion of a gruelling five-year process, the Auckland High Court found he had been short-changed in commissions by his former dealer.
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Above left The uniformity of the concrete, brick block and steel stairwell is broken by Bambury’s ‘Black House’ screen print, 2008. Above right Bambury likens his experience of colour to a form of synaesthesia and uses it to great effect in ‘Cartesian Circle (XXI)’, 2006/2014.
“I took a stance on what I believe to be artists’ rights and my rights. I guess the most positive experience is realising the sustenance I get from my work, my own strengths and weaknesses, and I think I’ve changed as a person for the better. I don’t regret the course that I took. People will make up their own mind but I don’t actually give a toss what people think, as long as I can do my work.” His former dealer has appealed the judgement. A happier experience was a recent trip to Basel, where he worked with Swiss artist Daniel Göttin and his partner, curator Gerda Maise, on a show called Upfall (a play on apfall, German for rubbish) at their gallery Hebel_121. An example hangs on the wall: some grey bits of Gib board banged together that he found near his home in Western Springs. “This idea of rubbish is a very serious idea about looking after the pool of inspiration, trying to be alert as possible, not letting anything slip through. Because often what’s happening on the peripheral, which is the rubbish on the floor, is better than what’s going on in your head.
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“We basically turned the room itself into a collage, then we started to arrange our rubbish around the rubbish we’d brought in with a history of Hebel, and it was kind of an exercise in collecting histories. It was interesting that none of us had a clue what we were going to do. It was all just done on the wing. It was a really nice experience.” The modern adoration for making from scratch is old news to Bambury, who has always done his own fabrication. “Smart people are beginning to realise that might be where the bacon’s cooking. There are still a lot of people producing work that looks to me like it comes out of a factory. But there seem to be more and more people giving attention to those more humanistic ideas, as an ecological imperative and act of resistance.” Working with chemicals, patinas and colours in his studio is when the alchemy takes place, says Bambury. “You set up a process and then the process starts to have a voice. So, this is the first time I’ll see this painting today,” he says referring to his current work. “Up until
Bambury says that every studio he’s worked in has produced different results: “I’m actually ready to leave this studio now. I know the new studio is going to have a new kind of influence on me.” The work on the wall behind the artist is ‘China (LXIV)’, 2011/2014.
now it has never had the gold. Who else gets to be the first person in the world to see something? Not many. It’s an incredible privilege that gets me out of bed every day.” It all seems enormously labour intensive, and it is. “People might think I produce a lot of work but I actually don’t, given the hours I’m in here. I’m not a fast worker, just a hard worker. But I’d pretty much rather be here than most other places.” His daughter Nicola tells me that at the age of 10 she came home from school and asked her father what he was going to do when he grew up. “All the other dads wore suits and had briefcases, so I was quite embarrassed,” she says. “One of the mothers said to me, what does your dad do? And I said a painter. She said, a house painter? And I said no, he paints rectangles.” Although she resisted it at first, Nicola is now an artist too. “I now really appreciate that I don’t have parents that are like other parents,” she says. This year marks the beginning of a new era, as Stephen packs up his studio and heads to a new space
off Rosebank Road in Avondale, while his Eden Terrace building makes way for the new City Rail Link. The idea of transitioning to a new space was painful at first, “but as with the court case, in adversity you can find an alternative. You can turn it up the other way. I took the first load to the new studio and it feels like it’s going to be very exciting. I’m moving from the city into a more industrial area. It’s a beautiful light, white space – a blank canvas. “Every studio I’ve worked in has produced different work. I’m actually ready to leave this studio now. I’ve been here 20 years and it has worked really well for me, and I know the new studio is going to have a new kind of influence on me. I always paint both the country I’m in and the studio I’m in. I can’t help it. It’s to do with the light, the volume of the architecture.” The evening has come, the rain has stopped and the painting is complete; the alchemy achieved. As he brushes it down, it twinkles in the light before covering me in gold dust.
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What we do in the shadows Art and design pieces that prefer to turn away from the light.
STYLING
— Amelia Holmes
PHOTOG RAPHY
— Toaki Okano
Artwork Matt Arbuckle, ‘Paper Baggie Burbs’ 2014 (painting at left), oil on board (630x470mm framed). Courtesy of Tim Melville Gallery, timmelville.com. Peter Robinson, ‘Die Cuts & Derivations’ 2015 (hanging at right). Courtesy of Hopkinson Mossman Gallery, hopkinsonmossman.com. Table by Amelia Holmes, $6200 from ameliaholmes.com. Vintage Japanese cushion, $64.50 from Everyday Needs, everyday-needs. com, with ‘Puna’ rug from Argentina, $1495, and tree-root bowl, $299, both from Indie Home Collective, indiehomecollective.com.
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Artwork Campbell Patterson, ‘Last Painting #8’ 2015, oil on canvas (1800x1450mm). Courtesy of Michael Lett, michaellett.com. ‘Basket’ chair by Nanna and Jørgen Ditzel for Kettal, $4970 from Studio Italia, studioitalia.co.nz, with ‘Godmother’ blanket, $445 from Everyday Needs, everyday-needs.com. ‘Daphine Terra’ floor lamp by Tommaso Cimini for Lumina, $1455, and ‘Kigi’ table by Roderick Vos for Linteloo, from $3070, both from ECC, ecc.co.nz.
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Artwork Ryder Jones, ‘Nipple’ mobile. Courtesy of Fuzzy Vibes, fuzzyvibes.com. ‘Panca’ bench by CRS Poliform for Poliform, $7800 from Studio Italia, studioitalia.co.nz. ‘He Said/She Said’ chair by Nitzan Cohen for Mattiazzi, $1518 from Simon James, simonjamesdesign.com, with vintage Japanese cushion, $64.50 from Everyday Needs, everydayneeds.com. Wall finish used throughout by Ambitec, ambitec.co.nz.
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IN OUR NEXT ISSUE
home year — — OF THE — —
201 6
21 YEARS OF NZ’S RICHEST ARCHITECTURAL PRIZE O N N E W S S TA N D S APRIL 4
HOME OF THE YEAR 2016
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art houses A mid-century marvel by Frederick Ost in Wellington ——76 In Berlin, a creative couple collaborates on an affordable apartment —— 88 Andrew Patterson designs an art-filled pavilion in an Auckland garden ——100 Eileen Gray’s French masterpiece, E.1027, is restored ——114 A thrifty home by Tim Heath overlooking Otago Harbour ——126
Below Original pegboard walls make hanging art easy. Artworks include pieces by Peter Robinson (top), Ava Seymour (to the right of Robinson’s), Giovanni Intra (above door), Amy HowdenChapman (left of door), Dane Taylor (middle left), Jhana Millers (the $10 note) Jessica Hubbard (a modified Lotto ticket on a clip) and Gary Peters (bottom). At right, the large yellow work is by Jeena Shin, the smaller one is by Nick Austin.
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Standing strong and outside time A Wellington home with an illustrious history inspires a new generation of creatives. TEXT
— Jeremy Hansen
PHOTOG RAPHY
— Paul McCredie
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You can feel the illustrious history of Ann Shelton and Duncan Munro’s home almost as soon as you walk in the door. From the outside, it looks solid but unspectacular, huddled into a Wellington hillside and looking towards the green slopes beyond. Inside, however, it opens up to reveal a lovely tension between modernist rigour and artistic exuberance, its clean lines and disciplined planning leavened with playful orange pegboard walls, pink ceilings, gorgeous period wallpaper, and a bar that pivots on casters. This was the home of Nancy Martin, a music educator and art collector who lived here from the late 1950s until her death, at the age of 90, in 2006. She’s believed to have been the first single woman in Wellington to get a mortgage. The daughter of a North Canterbury priest, she was pivotal in introducing the recorder to New Zealand schools, believing its low price made it a democratic musical instrument. She was also a friend of Margaret Sparrow, an advocate for reproductive rights. Martin was in her early 40s when she asked Frederick Ost to design her home. Ost was a Jewish architect, artist and essayist who resided in Wellington from 1940 after fleeing his native Czechoslovakia. He designed a number of rigorously rectilinear commercial buildings in Wellington – supermarkets, warehouses and office buildings – but very few private residences. (Many Wellingtonians will know the apartments he designed: the Adelphi Apartments on The Terrace, and Lincoln Court, a 1960s block in Brooklyn). The three-bedroom home he designed for Martin packs beautifully crafted experiences into a relatively petite frame, including an array of ceiling heights and a long, thin, wonderfully private deck running the length of the living area.
Above Ann Shelton in the living room. The artwork behind her is by Adrienne Martyn. The wave rug is a 1960s design purchased from an Auckland carpet-layer. Left The home’s exterior features large living-room windows overlooking the road and the trees beyond. A slim deck at left runs the length of the living area. Right The home’s entry features a tiki rug from the set of Niki Caro’s film Memory and Desire. The artworks to the left of the living room door are by Billy Apple for Youthline. The artwork partially visible at right is by Shaun Waugh.
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This photo The artworks on the kitchen wall are by Sarah Munro. The ‘Starburst’ carpet by Axminster is an offcut. The pink ceilings are the home’s original shade and the lampshades are also original. In the background, the home’s original bar cabinet is still in use and topped with pink Formica. Misty the cat eats from her bowl.
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Right The dining room diptych of the Lovelock oak at Timaru Boys’ High School is by Ann Shelton. The table is by Tim Webber; the chairs are Jean Prouvé replicas. The plate on the dining table is by Martin Poppelwell. The book Learning the Recorder by the home’s original owner, Nancy Martin, rests on the upper shelf. Below it is an ‘egg’ work by Daniel Malone for the Auckland-based artists’ collective, Cuckoo.
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Shelton, an artist, and Munro, a graphic designer and art director, knew little of their home’s history when they purchased it, just two days after Munro spied it online. There had been two other owners since Martin’s death, but each of them appears to have revered the house as much as Shelton and Munro do. “I knew it was going to be something special,” Munro says. “Its external features are quite plain, but it has real presence when you enter it. You step through the front door and it’s entirely different.” The couple’s previous home was an old villa, so their move was a full immersion in the pleasures of modernism: the sun that streams into the kitchen in the mornings and through the north-facing living room windows in the afternoon; Ost’s carefully planned relationship with the bush outside; the elegant separation of public and private spaces; the way the living room’s pegboard wall so easily holds works of art. They knew the house was designed by Ost, but didn’t know much about Nancy Martin. The speed with which they learned of her suggested something of Martin’s strength of character. One of her friends still lived up the road, and filled Shelton and Munro in on her biography. An art mover Shelton uses for her own work remembered visiting the house to deliver pieces for Martin. Another person dropped in to give the couple the home’s original plans, which he’d been accidentally given in some cookbooks. “Lots of these connections came out of nowhere,” Munro says. “It did feel a bit like we’d stepped into a movie.” These interactions provided artistic stimulation for Shelton, a photographer whose work has often tackled
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Top Just above the sideboard are works by Nick Austin (yellow on black), Vikky Alexander and Saskia Leek. Standing on the white cabinets are two plaster molotovs by Dane Mitchell, and works by Josephine Jelicich and Judy Darragh. The lamp is by Tim Larkin.
Above Duncan Munro on the deck with Misty the cat. Right The work above the sofa is by Adrienne Martyn. The cushions are by Hilda Downs, Shelton’s grandmother. The coasters on the table are by Martino Gamper and the bowl is by Paul Maseyk.
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Left Looking into the main bedroom from the hallway. The artwork above the bed is by David Cauchi, while the work in the hall is by Shaun Waugh. The cushions and blanket are by Hilda Downs. Right A small terrace off the kitchen captures the morning sun.
notions of home and architecture. Her 2007 series 26 Photographs of a House was a shot-for-shot recreation of James Walter Chapman-Taylor’s own photographs of The Castle, a home he designed in Taranaki, that showed just how enduring the architect’s original vision had been. Her 1999 series Abigail’s Party showed eerily depopulated, 1970s-tinged images of her own apartment in Auckland’s Karangahape Road. (Later this year, Shelton’s work will be the subject of a major exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery). More recently, Shelton created a book, A Spoonful of Sugar (designed by Munro), inspired by her own home. It contains her own photographs of the house, and a short story by Pip Adam, partly set there and that loosely uses the figures of Martin and Ost in its plot. Alongside the book project was a site-specific artwork at the house in which viewers were seated on stools in the living room while a recording of Adam’s story was played over the original built-in speakers. You get the sense that Martin would have got a kick out of her house continuing to provide such inspiration. Ost’s name lives on, too, not only in his buildings but in the scholarship established in his name at the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture by his widow, Greta Ostova, before she died in 1988 (Ost himself died in 1985). Their memory is also honoured by Shelton and Munro, who barely go a day without feeling grateful for the place they call home. “Being in a space where you sense the beautiful way it has been put together makes you realise the value of good design,” Munro says. “Living with that seeps into how you see the world.”
“Its external features are quite plain, but it has real presence when you enter it.”
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DESIGN NOTEBOOK Q&A with Ann Shelton and Duncan Munro How did you find the house? Ann Shelton Duncan found it on TradeMe while I was in Taranaki installing an art project. He emailed me and was terrified I wouldn’t like it. But I pretty much fell in love with it as soon as we walked through the door. Duncan Munro I knew it was going to be something pretty special. It’s reasonably modest from the street. It has a fairly distinctive shape but its external features are quite plain. You step through the front door and it’s entirely different. What have you learned about Nancy Martin, the home’s original owner? AS She was a bit of a trail blazer and purportedly the first single woman in Wellington to have a mortgage. She commissioned Frederick Ost, a refugee immigrant architect, to build it, and was a member of the first art investment group in New Zealand. Nancy was the person responsible for bringing the recorder to New Zealand schools – she was interested in the idea of it being a democratic musical instrument. She must have been an incredible woman. You both work in creative professions. Does the home affect the way you work? AS The idea of a ‘house’ has come up again and again in my practice. My recent works House Work and A Spoonful of Sugarr had their genesis here. These two works dip into and out of the narratives which circulate around this house, making visible the links between banking history, gender politics, agency, social history and the role of a woman in architecture in Aotearoa. DM Being in a space where you feel everything’s considered and crafted makes you think you should consider those things too – it’s like living up to the standard the home sets, in a way.
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Dining Living Kitchen Bedroom WC Bedroom Bedroom Bathroom
Right Shelton’s studio/ office was originally designed as a bedroom. Below w On the pelmet are three works on glass by Violet Faigan. A lamp by Tim Larkin stands by the window.
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This page The co-housing project, or Baugruppe, became known as R50 for its address – Ritterstrasse 50 in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Right Eleanor runs into the main bedroom of the apartment.
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Housing doesn’t have to cost a fortune In Berlin, New Zealand artist Ruth Buchanan tests an affordable housing model. TEXT
— Lucy Orbell
PHOTOG RAPHY
— Steffen Jagenburg
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While housing affordability worsens in parts of this country, a New Zealand artist in Berlin and a group of her peers have found a solution that could easily be applied elsewhere. Artist Ruth Buchanan has lived in Berlin for almost six years. The German capital possesses one of the most dynamic art scenes in the world and provides connections to ideas, people and experimentation. But the cost of living has risen rapidly in recent years, with properties leaping in price and pushing city dwellers further and further into outer suburbs. Not so for Buchanan and her architect partner, Andreas Müller, who recently joined a group of like-minded folk and developed their own apartment building. Now the couple and their three-year-old daughter Eleanor live on the Hochparterre, or raised ground floor, of their six-storey building, which contains 19 apartments. The greenery of the outdoors fills their home through floorto-ceiling windows and Buchanan says she loves being close to the garden – it makes her feel as if they’re living in a park. Their mortgage costs only 100 euros more a month than their previous rented apartment and provides them
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with a spacious 106-square-metre home and art studio. This minor miracle came about thanks partly to Berlin’s Baugruppe system, which translates as “joint building venture”, a model that places ideas of collectivity and participatory design at its heart. “We joined a Baugruppe because we were interested in the possibilities to experiment with collective ownership, family models and community structures in our everyday lives,” says Müller. Buchanan and Müller joined the group that purchased a site in Kreuzberg, not far from central Berlin, that had been re-zoned after first being earmarked for highway access, then a kindergarten. It was a rare and potentially expensive find that wasn’t for sale under normal conditions: the local land authority was seeking proposals for a venture that would contribute to urban development and the community. City councils see Baugruppe as a positive urban development strategy, as the ownership model means the inhabitants are deeply invested in creating a stable property and neighbourhood in which to live. The local land authority gave Buchanan and Müller’s Baugruppe a year to develop
Right The south-facing roof terrace is a shared space for all the occupants. Members of the garden working group manage the planting and day-to-day care, but all occupants help out. The roof terrace has basic kitchen facilities, a toilet and canvas canopy for shelter in the winter months. Below right The main entrance to R50 is down a ramp to a sheltered bike area, which also contains the entrance to the workshop, shared laundry, and primary entrance to the common room. Below A view from the gallery that overlooks the main area of the apartment building’s shared common room. The gallery entrance is adjacent to Buchanan and Müller’s apartment.
“We were interested in the possibilities to experiment with collective ownership, family models and community structures in our everyday lives.”
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Above Ruth talks to Eleanor, who stands in the slim, book-lined hallway, which shares its wall with the studio. It stands adjacent to the bathroom entrance and leads to the living room, which opens to the stairs leading down into the garden. Left Eleanor reads in her bedroom. Right The view of R50 from the south side of the street.
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their building proposal before having to pay for the site. Six architects from two practices – ifau und Jesko Fezer, and Heide & von Beckerath – collaborated and won their pitch to the Baugruppe with their proposal for R50 (Ritterstrasse 50), a concrete apartment block that would house 19 families, provide room for wider community use and emphasise shared spaces and neighbourly connections. Buchanan and Müller, who are friends of the R50 architects, recognised they had a special opportunity to design their own home in Berlin. Through word of mouth, the Baugruppe grew to 19 parties, enough to make the project feasible, “and it was all go from there”, says Buchanan. Affordability was central to the project, says Christoph Heinemann, one of the R50 architects, who also lives in the building. Restrained design using standard materials (unfinished concrete surfaces are prominent) and simple construction methods helped keep costs down, as did bulk purchases of fittings such as door handles, tiles and taps. There is only one staircase and a single lift. The consistent use of materials throughout the building gives it visual coherence, but
owners can paint and add interior details as they wish. There were other financial advantages to the Baugruppe structure. Each of the owners has an individual mortgage on their apartment, but they were able to negotiate better conditions when all owners approached the same bank as a group. They were also able to ensure the building met specified energy standards, which qualified them for mortgage credits with some banks. “People who don’t have high-earning jobs have the capacity to get a mortgage because they do it together as a group,” says Buchanan. “For me, that’s a really sophisticated understanding of how to live together, better.” The main advantage of the process, says Müller, was their direct involvement in the planning. This wasn’t a building where they haggled with developers. Instead, they worked with project managers and discussed details of every aspect of development with their future neighbours, and bore collective responsibility for cost increases, construction delays, and other wrinkles. Of course, the process required a lot of time and patience. “We had endless meetings, and a lot of them,” says Müller, “but disagreement and discussions were
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The south-facing wall in the living room is currently used for regular rotations of artwork, posters, photographs and remnants from the owners’ various projects. “We move things around a lot, furniture, and things on the walls – we like to keep things in flux and see them anew when they go from one spot to the another,” says Buchanan. Featured on the wall is work by Buchanan, Müller and Eleanor, as well as Benjamin Buchanan, Juliette Blightman, Özlem Altin, Marianne Wex, Louise Menzies, David Bennewith, Vanessa Bell and Rachel Koolen.
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necessary to find the compromises. The intense engagement actually led to a robust and successful design logic that supports our priorities around how we wanted to live next to each other. It was demanding, but a fascinating way to consider and challenge many things about home life that one takes for granted. As a result, we have a very strong community in the building.” Shared ground-floor spaces are key to the building’s success. There is a common room that hosts birthday parties, after-school activities, group dinners and visiting guests. The local community can rent the space for a small fee to cover expenses. The building also has a rooftop terrace that offers peace and quiet with views over the city. Everyone can enjoy the park-like grounds. Perhaps the most striking shared space is the wraparound balconies that encircle each floor, and provide a continuous, partition-free pathway from apartment to apartment. Children run laps within the metal railing, zooming past their neighbours’ windows. It’s this sense of ease and spontaneity that Buchanan loves. “I’m from a big family, and I felt it was a really important thing that while Eleanor doesn’t have siblings she has an amazing
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community around her,” she says. “There are 30 other children in the building, and I liked the idea of a familylike living environment where there’s the capacity for spontaneous contact as well.” Each apartment has a different floor plan, designed to the desires of each owner. Buchanan and Müller built diagonal walls in their apartment, giving the space a sense of energy and purpose. “Andreas and I worked very closely on this, it was a quite complicated process,” says Buchanan. “Our apartment is 106 square metres but about 26 of that is used for our studio.” Buchanan works from her home studio, which has internal and external entrances so that visitors can step straight into her work space. “We had a few things we knew we wanted – separate access to the studio, a separate kitchen, dining and living and interesting shapes and forms in the house, plus the capacity to reconfigure if necessary. Andreas made the wonderful decision to introduce a bold diagonal wall into the interior space, which meant our bedroom got smaller – we don’t need a big one – and our kitchen and dining room gains a special quality, as well as more room and light. Combined with the introduction of the
long wall with bookshelves which runs down the studio, these two design decisions created the core from which to work, and give our home an almost graphic sensibility. The more we live in our house, the more we think we made good decisions with the floor plan. We’ve managed to squeeze in a lot of spaces without feeling crammed.” Buchanan says that while it can be isolating working alone, the building is collegial and many of the other owners are writers, architects and designers who also work from home. That collegiality is vital when it comes to making collective decisions about the building. Every choice about the garden and common-room kitchen is made collectively – as a legal body the group votes on every decision. The majority rules, but everyone needs to feel considered, so diplomacy is essential. It sometimes feels as if the R50 building has been a huge collective art project, taking an idea from infancy and making it into a lived experience. “It’s a way of bringing interests in design, space, community and politics and the environment together at a scale that is realistic,” says Buchanan. “That you can realise all these things is quite inspiring.”
Top The balcony runs uninterrupted around the building. The aspect is north facing and looks into the rear of the garden, which circles the entire property. Above The long hallway joins the house from the bedrooms and kitchen to the living room, where Müller stands in the morning sun. Right The kitchen was a design challenge, says Buchanan. “It’s quite small but feels very open. We had a fairly tight budget so Andreas designed and built the kitchen himself using leftovers from a project of his (the bench tops) and an old artwork of mine, customised in the cupboards and shelves. Lots of things, such as lights and shelving, are re-purposed art works or leftovers from Andreas’ work as an exhibition designer.” Both artworks in the kitchen are by Buchanan. Left The couple included a diagonal wall in their design, which stands to the right of the dining table. A reading niche is tucked behind the curtain. In summer the table is often taken onto the balcony, where it feels almost as if it’s in the park, says Buchanan.
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DESIGN NOTEBOOK
Left This plan shows the entire first floor of the apartment building. Buchanan and Müller’s apartment, with its diagonal wall in the kitchen, is at the top.
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Q&A with Baugruppe apartment co-owner Andreas Müller. 10
What is a Baugruppe and what prompted you to join one? It’s a group of people who plan and build their own housing. It’s a legal body, and while commercial developers align their projects to the demands of the housing market, the Baugruppe model allows for participatory planning and individualised housing solutions. How did you know your group had the collective expertise to get the apartments built? Professional project management was initiated at the outset with a small firm that specialises in the development of Baugruppe projects. They were responsible for financial and administrative questions, for example the purchase of the land, the building permit, the juridical organisation of the group. They organised mortgages through the same bank so that we all got better conditions. They made cost estimates for negotiations with the bank and surveyed costs during the building process. Most importantly, they organised and moderated the weekly meetings of the group. What government laws made the Baugruppe and your building possible? Do you think these rules could be easily implemented in places like New Zealand? I think the reason that Baugruppe is successful is not because of law changes, but because of the specialisation of project management firms and architects who make the group processes possible. Many cities use the Baugruppe model as an urban planning strategy – it guarantees a high identification of the inhabitants with their building and neighbourhood, and therefore support Baugruppe projects through various means. In our case, the city of Berlin as the owner of the site supported the project by selling the land at below market price. In return, they got a project that’s stabilising a working-class neighbourhood through developing a different level of engagement, together with all the implications of gentrification. This type of project reflects the capacity for a denser housing model to provide interesting, quality design at a reasonable price, without compromising quality of life.
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Below The shared common space is located on the ground floor. The upper gallery can be used to accommodate guests. Bottom Buchanan and Eleanor in the garden at the northern side of the house.
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Below Architect Andrew Patterson designed the home as a “pavilion in a garden”. The living room is framed in steel joinery that allows views to the foliage outside. The ‘CH 25’ easy chairs by Hans Wegner are from Cult. A vase of ‘My Mum’ roses from the garden sits on the table.
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Taking art beyond these walls In a new Auckland home, a philanthropic couple hatches plans to make art more accessible. TEXT
— Jeremy Hansen
PHOTOG RAPHY
— Simon Devitt
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Above The terrace features a double-sided fireplace that also warms the living room. The modular ‘Rayn’ outdoor seating is by Philippe Starck for Dedon from Domo. The ottomans are by Paola Lenti from ECC. In the garden, the steel sculpture is by David McCracken and was commissioned through Gow Langsford Gallery. Right The home’s upper level is elevated on pilotis, with living areas tucked in below. Far right Sophia reads in the living room.
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The best way to live with art is not to be precious about it. So when Glenn and Sonja Hawkins briefed architect Andrew Patterson to design their new Auckland home, they didn’t talk much about their art collection, or where particular works might hang. Instead, they wanted a home that would allow them and their four children – two of whom are away at university, but regularly boomeranging back – to live with ease and comfort. All they asked for was light and sun, and for the home to have a strong connection with its garden. The artworks – which include pieces by Bill Culbert, Francis Upritchard, Max Gimblett, Karl Maughan and many more – would find ways to fit in when everything else was finished. Patterson responded with a “pavilion in a garden” inspired by the symmetry and severity of late 1960s Italian modernist buildings. He had spied these structures in city-fringe industrial areas during visits to Milan, and their discipline and rigour appealed to him just as much as the way they were often clad in repetitive arrangements of prefabricated panels. He also keyed into the language of the former building on the site, a group of four 1960s flats that possessed their own blunt modernist style. From the exterior, the building’s steel frame sets up a pattern in which windows alternate with panels of glass-reinforced concrete.
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Above Family life is centred in this room, which combines the kitchen, dining and living areas. Sonja Hawkins, an interior designer, chose a palette of oak boards, travertine floors that flow to the terrace, and brass accents as an elegant backdrop to family living. The white bentwood barstools are from Cemac Interiors. The metal artwork in the hallway is by Dane Mitchell from Hopkinson Mossman. The ‘CH24’ dining chairs are by Hans Wegner from Cult, and the ‘Ray’ sofa is by Antonio Citterio for B&B Italia from Matisse.
It is a home that looks simultaneously classical and contemporary. Patterson didn’t design the home fortress-style, with a high wall and punch-code gates, but with an open forecourt facing the street. The main entry is framed by low-set garages with green roofs. Inside the front door, Patterson created a surprise: four steps lead down to the main living floor (an opportunity permitted by the gentle slope of the site), meaning the ceilings suddenly elevate to a lofty 3.8 metres. “It becomes a Tardis,” Patterson says. “You step down and you’re in a magnificent stud height and you move towards the light.” These days, many new family homes seem to be designed with the intention of their occupants living almost separate lives. This one works differently, with a large combined kitchen, dining and living area serving as the home’s hub (there is a small TV room nearby, but there are no zones designated for the sole use of adults or children). The glassy multi-purpose living area is anchored by a large, steel-clad, double-sided fireplace that also serves the terrace that extends off the space and overlooks the garden outside. When he was creating it, Patterson envisaged a gracious rural home that just happened to exist in the city. The bedrooms upstairs, for example, are linked by a
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wide hall with windows at both ends that feel like a contemporary take on a colonial tradition. The house, Patterson says, “is a piece of romantic countryside in a sophisticated city”. Sonja, an interior designer, chose an elegant backdrop of robust materials indoors: oak boards for the walls, travertine floors and flowing linen drapes. In the kitchen, which has windows looking into a large butler’s pantry, she selected a black granite bench and devised an open shelving system from brass pipes that complements the tapware. All of it is pared-back, unfussy and timeless. The living area’s glassiness doesn’t really allow for the display of art, but Glenn and Sonja say they didn’t set out to build a gallery. Their interest in art is not focused on building their own collection, but on bringing the joy and sustenance of art to a wider range of people. Glenn, the founder of Avanti Finance, is a trustee of the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation, which was established to raise money for the gallery’s new building, and is now a vehicle to grow an endowment fund for the gallery’s ambitions, from creating new exhibitions to developing larger educational initiatives for schools. The main challenge, Glenn says, is to break the perception that philanthropy is something that only happens when donors have tens of thousands of dollars
The home, Patterson says, is “a piece of romantic countryside in a sophisticated city”.
Left The kitchen looks through to a butler’s pantry that fills the space with morning light. The ‘Caravaggio’ pendants are by Cecilie Manz from Cult. A sculpture by Ramon Robertson from NKB Gallery sits on the bench at right. The brass ‘Vola’ tapware by Arne Jacobsen is from Metrix. Above The butler’s pantry connects to a conservatory with a view of the potager. The solid wood table is by Peter Atkin from CTC Flooring.
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The home’s main living area looks out to the garden. The steel-clad fireplace is double-sided to serve the terrace. Inside, it anchors the elegant, multi-purpose living area. The ‘CH25’ chairs at left are by Hans Wegner from Cult. The ‘Log’ coffee table is by Roderick Vos for Linteloo from ECC. The ‘Lord Yo’ chairs outside are by Philippe Starck for Driade from Indice. The artwork to the right of the fireplace is a bronze lemon tree sapling by Michael Parekowhai from Michael Lett.
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Below The study near the home’s entry looks onto the garden. The lounge chair is by Charles and Ray Eames from Matisse. The ‘Buster Bulb’ lights are by Massimo Buster Minale for Buster + Punch from ECC. The ‘Kangourou’ side tables are by Mathieu Matégot for Gubi from Cult and the rug is from Artisan Flooring.
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Top ‘Kapa Haka (Pakaka)’, a figure by Michael Parekowhai, guards the hallway. Above The entry hall is illuminated by an artwork by Bill Culbert (left). At right is a work by Francis Upritchard from Ivan Anthony Gallery. Top right A work by Karl Maughan hangs behind the stairs in the entry. A photographic work by Bill Culbert (represented by Hopkinson Mossman) hangs on the landing.
to give, when contributions of any size can support the foundation’s mission to make art available to the widest possible audience. “If somebody can give $50, that’s fantastic,” he says. Last year, the couple took another step towards supporting artists’ development by establishing MyArt, a service that provides interest-free loans to art buyers who purchase works from accredited galleries. The idea is that the loans will make it easier for people to take the leap and purchase an artwork, something the Hawkins hope will increase turnover in the art market as a whole, and therefore mean more artists are able to earn enough to support themselves. A similar service in the UK has proven highly successful: 25 percent of its customers are first-time art buyers, and 80 percent reported that the availability of loans meant they increased their art spend. All this philanthropic activity happens from a beautifully designed home base. In many senses, Sonja and Glenn’s love of art and respect for the artistic process made them ideal architectural clients, too. “Andrew is the sort of guy who, if he has a bit of an open brief, gets the juices flowing,” Glenn says. You can see the results in the rigour and simplicity of the place they now call home. “It’s a severe building, but it’s designed for a beautiful life,” Patterson says.
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Above A ‘PP550’ chair by Hans Wegner from Cult sits beside a ‘Line’ table from Douglas and Bec. The artwork is by John Ward Knox. The bed by Piero Lissoni is from Studio Italia.
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Left Patterson describes the double-ended upstairs hallway as a contemporary take on a New Zealand colonial tradition. A work by Max Gimblett hangs at right opposite family photographs.
Below Sonja Hawkins designed the ensuite bathroom with oak wall and floorboards and a ‘Vieques’ bath by Patricia Urquiola from Matisse. For more bathroom details, see p.44.
Right The building’s steel frame sets up a pattern in which windows alternate with concrete panels, delivering the appearance of a simultaneously classical and contemporary home.
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DESIGN NOTEBOOK Q&A with architect Andrew Patterson of Patterson Associates
From the exterior, the building looks quite rigid in its geometry. What inspired its design? I love the severity of Italian modernism of the late 60s and 70s. In the Milan industrial suburbs, you see all these severe, panelled, modest buildings that we never saw the likes of in New Zealand. This house is panelled using industrial details and has a classicism about it because those Milanese buildings, like everything in Italy, come out of classicism. Plus, there’s a language of contained houses on the street – the sites are spacious enough to have a house that sits as a piece. Yet, as well as these industrial inspirations, you were also asked to ensure the house had a good relationship with its garden. The house is basically one big
kitchen and garden room surrounded by a garden. It’s about gardening, cooking and eating. You can have a country lifestyle in the city. It gives a sense of being a rambling country house. The long, double-ended upstairs hallway is in the best New Zealand colonial tradition. And the house has a parlour, used as a study, off the front door. The glassy living room is anchored by a big double-sided fireplace that faces the terrace. What made you decide on this? The problem with a fully enclosed glass room flowing outdoors is that you are always staring at the garden in the foreground, and sometimes in winter the garden isn’t always in good nick. It’s good to have things to hide behind; groups of people can see inside and out without eye-balling each other.
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Right An artwork by Max Gimblett hangs in the entryway. Centre right A ground-floor children’s room looks onto the garden. Far right The butler’s pantry also contains the laundry.
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Because we love Auckland, we want it to be better. Because the best schools aren’t good enough and the worst ones need a revolution. Because the politicians get it wrong and so do the academics and the lawyers and the cops and the artists and the banks. Not always, but too often, so things need to be said. Exposed. Argued. Laughed at. Because there are so many good things to eat, and wear, and see and hear and be a part of (and sometimes they’re not as good as they should be either, which also needs to be said). Because we cherish so many of the people of this city, and we want to tell you about them and show them to you. Because of all this: Isn't it time you picked up a copy of the latest Metro magazine? On sale now.
The lower level of Eileen Gray’s E.1027 holiday retreat on the French Riviera includes a sitting area and guest bedroom, while the level above (opposite) houses the main open-plan living area, study/bedroom and kitchen.
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A love nest, XYÆ`YXçUbXç restored Eileen Gray’s legendary French retreat wears its untidy history on its walls. TEX T & PHOTOG RAPHY
— Mary Gaudin
Above The 130-square-metre home backs into the hill and is raised to contain its lower level. Gray strategically placed windows and shutters to modulate light and breeze. Right While one of Le Corbusier’s murals was defaced by soldiers during WWII, others remained intact despite the years of neglect the home endured. The ‘Aixia’ chairs at the ‘Jean’ fold-out table were designed by Gray in 1928.
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Above Gray designed built-in and stand-alone furniture for E.1027, including the ‘Roquebrune’ chair. Above left Gray and Jean Badovici chose the site for its remarkable natural beauty. Le Corbusier, a frequent visitor, became inextricably linked with and obsessed by the home. He painted the white walls with his murals, built his tiny ‘Cabanon’ behind it and died during a swim in front of the home.
Eileen Gray’s first foray into designing a standalone home is a masterwork that sits elegantly in its location overlooking the Mediterranean. Recently restored, E.1027 was designed as a holiday home for Gray, a furniture and interior designer, and her lover and collaborator, Jean Badovici. Built between 1926 and 1929 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, this pioneering example of modernism has a complicated history, coupled with a long and fractious restoration. Born into a wealthy Irish family in 1878, Gray studied art in London and Paris, where she moved to in 1907. Having escaped the constraints of Victorian Ireland, she took to life in pre-war Paris and opened her own gallery, Jean Désert, in 1922 on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré as an outlet for her designs. She produced high-end furniture and lacquer work, notably collaborating with Japanese lacquer artist, Seizo Sugawara, and the Scottish weaver Evelyn Wyld. Gradually, she began to exhibit her work and sell pieces to wealthy clients. In the mid-1920s her designs became simpler, reflecting her growing interest in modernism. E.1027, like contemporary houses by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and other modernist pioneers, had white walls, large windows, a flat roof and incorporated industrial materials in its construction. But Gray’s innovative design was gentler, playful and more sensual in nature
than most modernist functionalism of that era. She took great care with her plans, studying the site’s interaction with the elements and ensuring the design accounted for changing light during the day. She nurtured her design into life, camping on site during construction to oversee the work. Conceived as an escape from life in Paris, Gray’s alphanumeric name for the home symbolised her devotion to Badovici – E.1027 entwines her initials with Badovici’s: E for Eileen; 10 for J as the tenth letter of the alphabet, 2 for B and 7 for G. Superbly elegant, Gray’s design for the interior of E.1027 was also playful and witty. Above a bed in a cupboard for pillows she has stencilled oreillers, while les dents appears on the tiles next to the basin in the main bathroom and pardessus where coats were hung. Much of her most well-known furniture was designed for E.1027. The ‘Transat’ chair was designed for the terrace and inspired by transatlantic ship deck chairs. The ‘Bibendum’ chair, also known as the ‘Michelin Man’, is Latin for “now is the time to drink”. The ‘Roquebrune’ dining chair, with its leather backing, is lovely in its simplicity. She also created built-in pieces for the home, which reflect her love of multi-functional designs. The home’s long horizontal windows, which span the length of the living room, perplexed architectural critics.
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Gray was a pioneering selftaught architect whose work, largely due to her private, introverted nature, went unnoticed and uncelebrated for decades. Here, a hammock on a small terrace overlooks the ocean.
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“It’s not a matter of simply creating beautiful assemblies of lines but, above all, dwellings for great people.”
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Left Gray designed the ‘Rivoli’ table specifically for E.1027 so that she could serve her guests tea while standing, rather than sitting down which she thought “awkward”. The coffee table in the background is typical of Gray’s penchant for multifunctional pieces and can be used over the knees, or as an occasional or bedside table.
Above Ironically, it was Le Corbusier’s murals and the attention that his name drew to E.1027 that helped save the building. Left A spiral staircase leads to the pebbled rooftop. Below A horizontal snapshot of the vista is captured through the tall windows.
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Left The ‘Bibendum’ chair is one of Gray’s most famous designs. Right A rocky outcrop below E.1027 is seen through pine-tree branches. Right, middle The ‘Nonconformist’ chair, which Gray designed in 1926, in the bedroom, which includes built-in pieces also designed by Gray. Far right Black tiles contrast against white and grey in the bathroom. Below right Gray designed the ‘Blue Marine’ floor rug in the study/spare room and the wall unit.
The windows were considered too low for the view until it was pointed out that they were perfectly in scale with the petite Gray. The critics – all men – had simply been too tall, having to stoop to see the best views. Not long after E.1027’s completion in 1929, Gray split from Badovici. She began work on a new home, Tempe à Pailla, in nearby Castellar, while he remained at E.1027, which she had gifted to him. Le Corbusier often visited Badovici and, while staying with him in the late 1930s, he painted eight enormous murals on the walls. Gray, who had not been consulted, accused him of “an act of vandalism”. The ensuing rift was never repaired. Le Corbusier was somewhat obsessed with E.1027. He tried and failed to purchase it himself, eventually buying a piece of land above it for his famous cabanon. Le Corbusier and Gray’s views on architecture differed greatly. He saw homes as serving a mechanical function for their occupants, while Gray took a humanist perspective, seeing homes as extensions of the human experience. “The poverty of modern architecture stems from the atrophy of sensuality,” she said. “Everything is dominated by reason in order to create amazement without proper research. We must mistrust pictorial elements if they are not assimilated by instinct. It is not a matter of simply constructing beautiful ensembles of lines but, above all, dwellings for great people.”
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Despite being built as a romantic retreat, E.1027 has seen its fair share of violence. Used for target practice by German soldiers during World War II, E.1027 went on to witness the murder of one of its owners in 1996, before being abandoned in the 1990s and occupied by squatters. The house was subsequently bought by the Conservatoire du littoral, a French public organisation which, in conjunction with local authorities, began the restoration process. Ironically, it was the murals that Le Corbusier painted that resulted in the saving of E.1027. The French state funded the restoration of the murals which had, incredibly, remained intact despite the disrepair the house had fallen into. While the restoration is ongoing, E.1027 is now open to the public. I’m not so sure that Gray would be completely happy with the work that has proved controversial. The house is now cruder and less refined. New metal railings aren’t to the original specifications, and nor is the glazing. Light switches have been replaced by standard modern plastic fittings and the colour scheme is different from the 1929 version. Nevertheless, the beauty and essence of the house is still there. But it would have been wonderful if the clear and precise vision that Gray had for E.1027 had been better respected.
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Left Eileen Gray. Photograph by Berenice Abbott/Getty Images.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK Q&A with Peter Wood, senior lecturer, Victoria University School of Architecture Your current research concerns design methodologies of modernist avant-garde architects, including Gray. How would you summarise E.1027 in the context of modernist architecture? E.1027 holds a singular place as an exceptional piece of work by an untrained architect. But what makes E.1027 really notable is that it’s the earliest example of a complete synthesis and culmination of values Le Corbusier was writing about, only six years earlier, in Towards a New Architecture. E.1027 comprehensively realises Le Corbusier’s manifesto and throws in a bit of Bauhaus and De Stijl. Moreover, Gray expanded her vision into furniture and furnishings, filling the house with beautifully designed pieces that integrate seamlessly. Her vision was total and there’s a strength of character in her work that’s typical of architects certain of how to live properly. At the same time she’s described as exceedingly shy, which may partly explain why she never challenged Le Corbusier’s treatment of her. The restoration is considered flawed by many critics. What are your observations? It was always going be impossible to ‘reconstruct’ E.1027; there was never a fixed moment of it being historically ‘finished’. There’s the immediate problem of Le Corbusier’s murals, which couldn’t be removed due to his significance, even if they have changed Gray’s original intention for the interior. Also, the deterioration of the house is a fascinating story and restoring something to a pristine condition steals this away. The International Style wasn’t immediately accepted at the time, and E.1027s significance was not appreciated much beyond a small, albeit exceedingly notable, group of architects. The recent and important popular discovery of Eileen has featured E.1027 as the centrepiece of her genius. We should remember the derivation of the house’s name. Although the division of creative influence is unclear, Gray and Badovici were collaborators. I think she was brilliant but I’m not sure she could have revealed her brilliance without Badovici’s assistance.
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Below Wood says E.1027 clearly relates to the site and responds to environmental influences such as orientation and ventilation. “Yet, in other ways, it rejects any specific influence from the site. E.1027 could be built today on the New Zealand coast without much alteration, and still demand attention,” he says. Bottom The home reveals streamlined, ship-like beauty.
SUMMER ISSUE OUT NOW
Below Homeowners Andrea McSweeney and Blair Kennedy (and their dogs Grub and Million) on the deck outside their home, which has a view up Otago Harbour to Taiaroa Head. Right Architect Tim Heath placed the dining area at the centre of the home.
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The art of living on the edge Tim Heath designs a compact home and painting studio perched above Otago Harbour. TEXT
— Jeremy Hansen
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— Simon Devitt
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“They wanted a small house on a minimal budget.” These words are not always music to an architect’s ears, but it’s just the sort of challenge relished by Tim Heath, founder of the Dunedin-based firm Architectural Ecology. Inspired by a “cracker site” with amazing views on the edge of Otago Harbour at Port Chalmers and the desire of his clients, Blair Kennedy and Andrea McSweeney, for more than a standard-issue “processed house”, he felt excited about the potential of what good architecture could deliver. “When you’re an architect and you’re designing something middle of the road it’s hard to make it effective,” he says, “but when you’ve got a challenging climate or fairly extreme conditions you can make a hell of a big difference.” Heath has designed significant buildings for schools and universities as well as the beautiful visitor centre at Otago’s Orokonui Ecosanctuary, which in 2011 won a National Architecture Award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects. But he still
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believes architecture has plenty to prove. He worries that his profession has become too elitist, and that its benefits are available to an ever-narrowing group of people. “People who do use architects are spending lots of money, and that’s not where design is most effective,” he says. In Kennedy and McSweeney he found clients who could help him prove that architecture is not a luxury indulgence, but something that brings huge benefits to people who might think they can’t afford it. “They didn’t have a lot of money, they had a lovely site and they’re lovely people,” Heath says. “A designer can’t really want more than that. It’s challenging, but that’s what we’re there for. To answer the questions.” In this case, the questions were manifold. How do you design efficiently on a steep site that receives minimal afternoon sun in winter and gets regularly belted by icy southerly winds that gust up the harbour? How do you maximise views when those views
Left The home is on the eastern fringe of Port Chalmers, overlooking Otago Harbour, and features a barrel-vaulted roof at its centre.
Below The “viewing bay” on the home’s southern side looks across the harbour towards Portobello. The carpet is ‘Summer Bouquet’ by Feltex.
Bottom Artworks by Blair Kennedy, Phil Frost and Robin Sharma outside the entrance to the sauna. Kennedy’s studio is beyond the sitting area.
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Far left The kitchen, dining and living areas span the centre of the home, while sliding doors in the bedrooms at either end allow views right along its length when opened. Left The kitchen is located on the north-western side of the home to attract as much winter sun as possible. Right Kennedy’s painting studio is located in an alcove off the main living area.
There are almost always views along the full length of the home and through the windows beyond. are to the south and east, and keep the house warm in the process (south-facing glass, of course, can equal serious heat loss). Most of all, Heath says, “how do you put those things together in a way that’s magic and fits the site and those people?” Kennedy and McSweeney are both high-school art teachers and wanted a space in which they could create their artworks at home (Kennedy paints, and McSweeney fills much of her non-teaching time with photography and print-making). They also like to entertain, and asked for the kitchen and dining areas
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to be at the centre of their home. As Heath says, this short list of requirements meant “you’re almost back to what you’d normally do in a bach – that communal coming together.” There’s a strong commitment to sustainability in all of Heath’s work, but this site didn’t allow for standard-issue solutions. Laying a simple concrete pad was impossible, so Heath designed a system of pre-cast concrete slabs that were laid onto the floor framework. Heavy insulation beneath them created a thermal store. He lined the home’s southern wall with utility areas such as the bathrooms and a storage zone, then broke it open with a viewing bay that offers incredible floor-to-ceiling views past Goat and Quarantine Islands to Portobello on the opposite side of the harbour. It’s a vista that demands you spend time to take it in. “One of the great things Tim has done is to amplify the things we like about the section,” Kennedy says. “We have people who get vertigo
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The home’s main volume is topped by a vaulted ceiling with macrocarpa battens laid over pine ply sheets. Kennedy’s studio is located behind the cabinets. At left, the laundry is tucked into an alcove. The portrait at left is by Kennedy, while the artwork at right is by David Elliot. Above the sideboard are works by McSweeney and Kennedy.
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Above The home’s roof tips upwards on its westerly face to welcome late-afternoon sun inside. The ramp at left leads from the driveway to the home.
Above right A view from the laundry area through to the sunny main bedroom. The artworks are by Kennedy, McSweeney and Robert Scott.
when they come here. They get to the sofa and eventually sit down and realise they won’t drop off.” Heath’s other key move was to open the home’s northern side to the sun as much as he could. Here, the roof line tips upwards so that late light streams in over the kitchen bench in the middle of winter. The main bedroom, with its view up the harbour to Taiaroa Head, gets sun all day. Outdoor living is tucked in a sunny, sheltered spot outside the kitchen, and on a petite deck that extends off the bedroom. The home’s layout has a lovely symmetry, with one bedroom at each end and the kitchen, dining and living areas spanning its centre. The space Blair uses as a painting studio is a comfortable alcove off the living room. This openness creates a feeling of spaciousness greater than the home’s 140-square-metre size. Sliding doors to the bedrooms are usually left open, which means there are almost always views along the full length of the home and through the windows beyond
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Above The main bedroom looks out to the vegetable garden and Taiaroa Head beyond. It was designed as a flexible space that’s also used in the daytime.
– all of it across what feels like acres of flowery ‘Summer Bouquet’ carpet by Feltex, a recently re-released classic. As Kennedy says, “you stand in the lounge and can see in every direction.” I quizzed Heath about what seemed a counter-intuitive decision to locate the main bedroom in the sunniest part of the home, and he told me that his clients “don’t see the bedrooms as secluded spaces – they like to sit in the bedroom in the morning and have a cup of coffee and use it as a living space. They’re quite fluid.” The openness of the home’s layout certainly supports this. Many people find home-building a budget-stretching, highly stressful exercise, but this wasn’t the case; Kennedy and McSweeney found it far more convivial than that. In fact, they saw it as a highly satisfying creative collaboration with their architect. “The process was great,” McSweeney says. “It was like a massive art project.” Adds Kennedy: “It’s like living in an artwork. There are things that surprise me about it every day.”
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What were you asked to design here? They wanted a small house on a minimal budget of about $400,000. We had to work very hard to achieve it. They had this cracker site with amazing views. They were quite adamant that the kitchen and dining areas should be central to the way they live. They both love art and painting and doing those good things, as well as cooking and entertaining their friends. So you’re almost back into what you’d normally do in a bach, whether you’re gathering around a fire outside or sitting around a table. It’s that communal coming together.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK
You also had views in one direction and sun in the other. The prime view in my opinion is not that which looks out towards the heads, but looks out towards the harbour
Q&A with Tim Heath from Architectural Ecology
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cone and Quarantine Island, which has so much bio-cultural and social history. We placed all the utility zones along the south wall of the house and placed a viewing bay in the middle. We opened up the house on the north as much as we could. The kitchen bench stayed in the warm place on the north side. You get special views from both the bathrooms and the showers. The people in the boats going by get a bit of a surprise. What made you decide to place the bedroom in the sunniest part of the house? They don’t see the bedrooms as secluded spaces. They like to sit in the bedroom and have a cup of coffee in the morning and use it as a living space. They’re quite fluid. I came away feeling pretty satisfied that they got a good house for the money they paid.
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Entry Kitchen Dining Living Bedroom Bathroom Sauna Studio Laundry
Below left The home’s steep site offers amazing harbour views. Below centre Kennedy and McSweeney in the kitchen. Below right A full-length window in the bathroom offers more views of Otago Harbour.
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A Port Chalmers home overlooking Otago Harbour, designed by architect Tim Heath of Architectural Ecology. Photograph by Simon Devitt. For more, see p.126.
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A day of design store tours and expert brieďŹ ngs guided by HOME editor Jeremy Hansen
F RIDAY MAY 20
T IC K ETS
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H OW TO B O O K Book your tickets online at eventopia.co/stylesafari2016. Each ticket costs $85 and includes lunch and our all-day Style Safari experience. For information, contact Liezl Hipkins-Stear on 09 308 2783 or lhipkins@bauermedia.co.nz
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style safari PRESENTS
2016
HOME’s Style Safari is an exclusive day-long set of briefings on the latest design trends and releases from the Milan Furniture Fair, guided by HOME editor Jeremy Hansen. The day commences at 9am and includes five design briefings at Auckland’s most important design stores, finishing around 5pm. Lunch is included. Numbers on the Style Safari are limited to 50, so reserve your tickets now.
O U R G U E S T S PE AKER S
Valeria Carbonaro-Laws
Greg McLeod
STUDI O I TALIA
ARTISAN FLOORING
We visit the beautiful Studio Italia showroom and hear about the most exciting releases from Milan.
Artisan Flooring’s director on flooring trends and his firm’s international ranges of artisanal rugs.
Sam Haughton
Michelle Backhouse
IM O
BAC KHOU SE IN T E R IOR S
The New Zealand design firm on their process, prefab kitchens and new furniture releases.
Backhouse Interiors will be back from Milan with new products from Kartell and other prestige brands.
Mike Thorburn E CC ECC’s chief will give a comprehensive rundown of the latest developments at the Milan Furniture Fair.
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A sneak preview for 2016, Mobile Ceramics are introducing yet another innovative tile range called Metal Style. This porcelain stoneware collection emphasises the concept of “worn metal” as a stylistic choice for flooring. In three finishes, Iron, Revival and Corten, are synonymous with the intrinsic characteristics of each. Metal Style is the right choice for customers who wish to amaze themselves and surprise others. For more information, contact one of their Auckland outlets, or phone to find your nearest stockist. ALBANY SHOWROOM: Tawa Trade Centre, Shop 5, 2 Tawa Drive, Albany, Auckland HOWICK SHOWROOM: 198 Moore Street Howick, Auckland Ph 0800 002 005 www.mobileceramics.co.nz
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Te Uru
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Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery is based in scenic Titirangi on the bush-clad outskirts of West Auckland. From 20th February, Te Uru hosts the exhibition Faces of Jerusalem by Auckland photographer, Ilan Wittenberg. The series portrays the Old City as one occupied by real people eking out a living in places densely packed with culture and history.
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Exhibitions Gallery Exhibitions Gallery of Fine Art has a wide range of accomplished artists with new exhibitions held monthly at the gallery. By appointment, artwork can also be viewed in homes around the greater Auckland area with no obligation to buy, giving our clients choice at their leisure.
endemicworld Endemicworld is a popular art print shop located on Auckland's Ponsonby Road. They are the best source of contemporary New Zealand and international limited edition art prints and originals.
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Next Door Gallery Our ever-changing range of exquisite glass, ceramics, jewellery, art, prints, garden pieces and craft is all made in New Zealand by our carefully chosen artists. Stockists of limited edition prints and originals by Justine Hawksworth (‘Kawau Bay’ pictured) 132 Hinemoa St, Birkenhead, Akld, Ph 09 480 9289 'Celebrating NZ Creativity Locally' OPEN 7 Days www.nextdoorgallery.co.nz
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Connecting with art in a gallery can be a special experience – at Sanderson Contemporary we make it easy to bring that experience into your home. With our fantastic programme of exhibitions, online catalogues, expert consultancy and hundreds of artworks in stock, we make finding the perfect pieces for your home stress-free and enjoyable. It’s important to be totally sure your art will bring you joy every day, so we always offer you the opportunity to view works at home on an obligationfree basis. At Sanderson Contemporary, we don’t just offer great art – we also give our clients amazing service. Visit us today to experience something different. sanderson.co.nz Osborne Lane, 2 Kent Street, Newmarket, Auckland +64 9 520 0501 info@sanderson.co.nz
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MY FAVOURITE BUILDING Jenny Harper, director of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, celebrates the post-earthquake reopening of the city’s artistic heart.
“Before Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu opened in 2003, the pros and cons of it being sited in the city’s ‘Victorian quarter’ were hotly debated, with the winning design (in)famously described as a ‘warehouse in a tutu’. Whatever was thought of the glass façade, this community was in awe when it was intact after 22 February 2011 as the gallery became the city’s emergency headquarters. It took time to retrofit and assure this public building’s safety, and none of us dreamed of being closed almost five years. Like others in Christchurch, we found temporary digs and carried on with the business of ensuring art was not lost to this
PHOTOG RAPHY
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city’s imagination. All sense of trauma was left behind as we joyously welcomed visitors back just before the end of 2015. By mid-January, 67,700 visitors had enjoyed this cornerstone of art and memory. Our exhibition spaces are transformed by the bounty of our collections – old friends and new acquaintances. Even the vaguely pretentious marble staircase has met its match with the reclaimed materials of Bill Culbert’s ‘Bebop’ soaring above it. We’re constantly reassured of how surprising art is as birds and beasts, yellow ochre paint, pencil leads, carved wood and caster sugar are revealed anew in the gallery. What bliss it is to have our doors open again!”
— Kate Claridge
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Dulux, Dulux Colours of New Zealand and Worth doing, worth Dulux are registered trade marks of DuluxGroup (Australia) Pty Ltd.
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