'Going Green' and World's Nest

'More and more big businesses, consumers, and schools are Going Green these days. Helping lead the way are Robert Plarr and Michael Fulton, founder's of Angel's Nest, a research house in New Mexico that showcases the latest developments in 'sustainable living.' They are co-authors of "The Secret of Sustainability."'

What  "Going Green" does mean in practise? The use of renewable energy, limiting the use of fuel, constructing and functioning in the energy-saving way.

And here we approach the meritum. E.g. - Robert Plarr and Michael Fulton, the founders of so called Angel's Nest, the research unit in New Mexico, that showcases the latest developments in 'sustainable living.'

Michael Fulton and his Angels' Nest , source: 

So, everything seems just perfect isn't? I am not so sure as a matter of fact. Looking at the photos of  Angel's Nest I have the huge problem to understand what does the saving of energy means if we assume the life and normal functioning in the middle of a desert. Where the location compells us to use a car as a basic transport unit. Where we must use the maximum of energy to keep our home warm (even if it is perfectly energy-saving). Probably only a wind may help us as in such circumstances (in the middle of vast empty spaces) it happens to be extremely fort. We had the occassion to check it in Poland last year, in summer, when few tornados went through the central part of the country, a video below.

I have a very strong impression that there is something wrong about this idea. And that ecologist, with all the respect towards the "Going Green" movement should be aware that the location of development is clue for energy saving and environment protection. More - I am just deeply convinced that this moment is very close when the ecologists admit the need of urban planning as one of the basic methods of nature protection. Because Going Green - understood as an environment protection and the sustainable development - does not mean living in the distant desert nor living in the distant countryside suburbs.

Getting heavy

There is an honourable tradition in New Zealand home design that strives for lightness, of timber homes resting lightly on the land. I remember my French teacher at high school saying that when she returned to New Zealand after many years in France, the homes in New Zealand looked as if they could all blow away in the next breeze.

One of the finalists in this year's Home of the Year award makes a case for the European sort of solidity my teacher was referring to. The house is by Stevens Lawson Architects (who won the award with their house by Lake Wanaka, which you can see in an earlier post), built for clients who requested concrete for its heft and its low-maintenance qualities. These photographs by Mark Smith show just how solid this home turned out to be. It is located on a harbourside site in Auckland's eastern suburbs. The elevation below faces the water, with the main bedroom on the upper right, the kitchen and dining space below it, and a covered sitting area extending off the living room on the left-hand-side of this image:

The house is just as sculptural at the entrance, at the bottom of a very steep driveway. This shot gives you a good view of the central 'canyon', a glass-topped, double-height hallway that drags light into the centre of the home. (The house is located beside a slope to the north that blocks sunlight for a few hours in the winter, hence the design of the glass-topped volume to admit more light).

The home was designed using pre-cast concrete panels that feature ribbed details best viewed in this shot of the southern elevation:

The monumental exterior means some of the interiors are just as dramatic. This view shows the inside of the 'canyon' with its glass-topped roof. The timber feature is a 'bridge' across this double-height space.

This shot looks from the dining area across to a living room which in turn opens onto the covered exterior sitting area you can see in the first shot of this post. Inside, the material palette has been kept to a simple combination of timber and concrete with slate floors.

Some of the rooms feature surprising and dramatic devices for admitting light, such as the space in the shot below, which can be used as a home theatre or a snug, cave-like hideaway (there is also a slow window looking out to the water just out of the right-hand-side of the frame). The home may seem intimidatingly hefty from the outside, but as you can see, the interior offers a wide range of views and experiences.

So there you have it - an unashamedly heavyweight house. Sure, it runs contrary to the New Zealand timber tradition, but its engagement with the uniquely New Zealand landscape around it means it doesn't feel as if this is anything other than a New Zealand house.

Our new masthead - and cover!

Our next cover, which you'll see on newsstands from October 11, features our revised masthead, which you can see in the image above (the house is by Andrea Bell of Pete Bossley Architects).

A couple of months ago we decided that our previous masthead no longer fit as cohesively as we would like with the rest of the magazine. When art director Miranda Dempster started work here about 18 months ago, she introduced a family of rounded, friendly-looking fonts that she felt softened the harder edges of some of the architecture we feature, and enhanced the magazine's sense of approachability. Once she did this, the old masthead started to feel a bit dated; its pointiness and heavily 'constructed' feeling no longer represented what we wanted the magazine to stand for.

So we contacted Arch MacDonnell (that's him in the photo above) at Auckland design firm Inhouse and asked him and his team to come up with options for a new masthead that better reflected our vision for the magazine. We said we wanted something that felt evolutionary rather than revolutionary, especially considering the magazine only changed its name from NZ Home & Entertaining to HOME New Zealand three years ago. Change is good, but we didn't want to force too much radical change on our readers.

After a few meetings in which Arch showed us a really exciting set of options, the masthead you see above is the one we opted for. Interestingly, as we've been showing it around the office here, some people don't even notice that there's been a change, something that suits us fine, as we didn't want our regular readers to feel they no longer recognised us.

We like the new masthead's friendliness and approachability, and we also like how clean and graphic it feels. The period at the end containing the letters 'NZ' adds a nice sense of solidity, a feeling that we emphatically know what we're on about (which, most of the time, we like to think we do!). What we like most of all is how it sits so comfortably on our new cover, as if it logically belongs there.

Arch is on our next contributors' page answering questions about the new masthead. Here's what he had to say:

HOME New Zealand: How did you and your team come up with our new masthead?

Arch MacDonnell: We wanted to soften the hard-edged angularity of the old masthead. It needed to feel more 'homely' without being too cutesy or crafty. We opted for a customised weight of Gotham rounded, an elegant and modern font from the talented folk at Hoefler & Frere-Jones. We think the resulting letterforms are assertive yet not imposing. Friendly, yet not folksy. All in all, a well-rounded solution.

Did you enjoy the process?

It's always nice to work on a project that needs to evolve rather than radically change.
Getting up close and personal with the letterforms is something we like to do! And it’s amazing how little adjustments here and there have such an effect on the personality of a letterform.

What else are you working on at the moment?

As always there's a diverse mix of projects simmering away at Inhouse. There's a new wine label for &Co simply called The Supernatural, with a brief to break wine label conventions, a brand refresh for the Auckland Art Fair, a new book project with the irrepressible John Reynolds, and an identity extension for a coffee roastery/restaurant/bar in London (Caravan) as well as developing a series of our own graphic objects that we'll be releasing in the coming months.

Fashionable interiors

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

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

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

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

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

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

World Architecture Festival

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

David Mitchell & Julie Stout's studio

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

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


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

The small kitchen is located underneath the mezzanine bedroom:


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


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


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

Daniel Marshall's other Waiheke house

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

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


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

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

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

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

Warren & Mahoney on Nine to Noon

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

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

Daniel Marshall on Waiheke

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


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


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

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

Mitchell & Stout on the North Shore

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

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

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

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

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

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

More shots of our winning house

One of the best things about having a blog is that we can show images here that we weren't able to shoehorn into the magazine. So here are some more views of our Home of the Year 2010 by Stevens Lawson Architects, a beautiful house in a beautiful landscape. All the photos are by Mark Smith. This one shows the view south over the house to Lake Wanaka.

And this one looks over the house to the west, with the Treble Cone skifield just out of frame.

Here's a night view of the home's western elevation, with the kitchen space opening onto a courtyard. The room at the left of the picture is the main bedroom.

And here's a view southwest over the lake, which clearly shows the way the architects designed the home's cedar skin to wrap the walls and the roof. (For those of you wondering how a wooden roof works, it conceals a waterproof membrane underneath it, and is constructed in removable panels to allow easy maintenance of the membrane if necessary).

We'll post more outtakes of the other Home of the Year finalists over the next few weeks.

And the winner is...

We're very pleased to announce that the winner of the Home of the Year 2010 is Stevens Lawson Architects for a home they designed beside Lake Wanaka. Congratulations to Nicholas Stevens and Gary Lawson for their third Home of the Year win in the 15 years of the competition. The Home of the Year issue is on newsstands on Monday.

BMW EfficientDynamics Sustainability Award

Since BMW joined us as our Home of the Year partner, we have introduced a new award as part of our Home of the Year coverage: the BMW EfficientDynamics Sustainability Award, which celebrates innovation and responsible use of resources in sustainable home design. This year's winners are Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr, who designed this house in Arrowtown, which is featured in our Home of the Year issue, on newsstands Monday:

As their prize, Pete and Bronwen receive a six-month lease of a BMW 320d, a diesel-powered marvel of fuel economy (using just 5.3 litres of fuel per 100km, and with carbon emissions of just 140g per km). Congratulations Pete and Bronwen.

The last two finalists on Campbell Live

Here's the link to Campbell Live's footage from last night of the last two houses in this year's award.

Remaining finalists for Home of the Year unveiled - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

We're announcing the winner of the Home of the Year award (and the BMW EfficientDynamics Sustainability Award) tonight at a function in Auckland. We'll post details on this site tonight, too.

Looking back at last year's award

If you're looking at David Mitchell and Julie Stout's house that is a finalist in this year's Home of the Year award in our earlier post, you might also like to check out their winning design from last year, the Home of the Year 2009 on Waiheke Island.

Waiheke retreat wins Home of the Year 2009 - Video Archive - Video - 3 News

This footage was screened on TV3's Sunrise breakfast programme, which we miss... it was shut down earlier this year.

Home of the Year - Part Two - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

Part two of Campbell Live's coverage of the Home of the Year judging process was on TV3 last night - the story is at this link:

Home of the Year - Part Two - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

There is one more episode of the judging journey to go to air before we announce the winner on Thursday July 27. And remember, the Home of the Year issue of the magazine is on newsstands August 2. Stay tuned!

Campbell Live tonight

The kind folks at TV3's Campbell Live have just told us the second installment of their coverage of the Home of the Year finalists will be screening on tonight's show. We'll post a link to the footage on this site tomorrow if you missed seeing it live. UPDATE: Seems the footage didn't go to air last night - we were warned that there might be last-minute reshuffles, so hope you didn't stay home especially. We'll keep you posted about the next installments.

Home of the Year finalists

A little tease: here, we present to you an image of each of the finalists in this year's Home of the Year award. They're presented in no particular order - and remember, you have to hang on a while until we announce the winner on the evening of Thursday July 29.

We'll post news of the winner on this site that night, and it will also be announced on TV3's Campbell Live. HOME New Zealand's Home of the Year issue goes on sale August 2.

Thanks to our partners BMW - who admire good design as much as we do - the winning architects receive a $15,000 cash prize, making this New Zealand's richest architectural award.

This year we have six finalists. Unusually, two architects have two finalists each. The first of these is Daniel Marshall, who designed two houses on Waiheke Island. This one (shown below) is nestled in a bay at the island's eastern end, and was photographed by Simon Devitt.

And this one is on the northern side of the island, and was photographed by Patrick Reynolds.

The winners of last year's Home of the Year award, David Mitchell and Julie Stout of Mitchell & Stout Architects, have their own Auckland home (below) in this year's lineup of finalists. It was photographed by Patrick Reynolds.

Stevens Lawson Architects also have two homes in the finals. Both were photographed by Mark Smith. This one is a home on the shores of Lake Wanaka:

And this one is a home in east Auckland:

Finally, this home in Arrowtown was designed by Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr of Queenstown's Kerr Ritchie Architects. It was photographed by Paul McCredie.

Which one do you think should win? Feedback is welcome...

Home of the Year - Part One - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

Last night TV3's Campbell Live played the first of their coverage of the finalists in the Home of the Year award (we'll be announcing the winner at a function on the evening of July 29), proudly presented in conjunction with our partner BMW.

Campbell Live have been great supporters of the award for many years now, but this year they did things a little differently, following the judges (New York's Charles Renfro, Auckland's Ken Crosson, and me) on their journey around the country to see the homes. First up, two homes by Daniel Marshall on Waiheke Island.

Home of the Year - Part One - Campbell Live - Video - 3 News

All these homes will be published in our Home of the Year issue, on newsstands August 2.

Karl Maughan's studio

Artist Karl Maughan - whose paintings of exuberant gardens feature in some very important art collections around the world - creates his works in an exceptionally orderly studio/library in a converted garage at his Auckland home. Patrick Reynolds shot these images for our April/May2010 issue. They nicely capture Karl at work, as well as giving us a glimpse of his amazingly organised bookshelves.



In one corner of the room (seen in the image below), Karl has pinned several maps of the North Island together, a habit that began with a map of the Manawatu region where he grew up. The Chinese pagoda artwork is by James Kirkwood. Beside it, immediately beneath the map, is a work by Julian Dashper, with one of Karl's earlier works below that.

Karl has a particular enthusiasm for old children's books such as 'The Empire Annual for Boys'; his habit of collecting them began in the 1970s and has continued since, hence the bookshelves in his studio are stuffed with children's books published between 1850 and 1910.

He mixes his paints on a glass-topped table before applying them to his canvases. He didn't tidy the studio especially for the shoot - apparently it's always this neat.