News
Auckland Design Week returns in 2025
Building on its successful 2024 launch, the week-long celebration of design will return 3–9 March 2025 with international designer Karim Rashid as keynote speaker.
AUT hosts international sustainability conference
Free to attend, the International Conference of Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) is taking place 7-9 November 2024 in Auckland, hosted by AUT School of Future Environments.
CTRL Space wins international award for Metita
The Interior Award-winning restaurant Metita in Auckland’s SkyCity has won in the prestigious Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, this year held in Barcelona.
Victoria Street West redesign opens to public
The first section of a redesigned Auckland CBD street signposts more of what’s to come as part of the city’s midtown regeneration programme.
Projects
Prefab cabins with a distinctly sustainable flavour
Bento, a new line of modular, transportable cabins by designers and siblings Tomek and Gosia Piatek, offers eco-friendly, sustainable features and Japanese-inspired aesthetic.
Kanat Studio gets the goal for Netball North Harbour
Kanat Studio’s interior design for Netball North Harbour has completely transformed the 70-year-old facility, creating a proud home fit for Auckland’s netball community.
Empathy materialised
Nicholas Auld of OTO Group Architecture, talks us through the process and design solution for a funeral home interior in the industrial suburb of Penrose in Auckland.
Review
Building homes that are good for your health
An informative and entertaining ‘open source’ book doubles as a reference document for tradies, educators, students and prospective homeowners.
Behind the Object: La~De~Da Pendant
Nightworks Studio, bespoke lighting specialists in Ōtautahi Christchurch, tell us how they landed on the exaggerated gentility embodied in the design of its new La~De~Da Pendant.
Queen Street: To evolve or devolve?
Annabelle Smith reviews the ‘The Great Debate’, part of 2024’s Aotearoa Festival of Architecture, where wine was poured while a motion was raised: “Queen Street must evolve!”
Practice
Drawn out
In the latest of our Practice in Profile series supported by Resene, Sean Flanagan examines the reasons why hand-drawing makes an efficient and rich contribution to design.
A Modernist’s legacy in the Waikato: Henry Kulka
Architect Matt Grant investigates the history of Henry Kulka’s work in Hamilton City and the design legacy they hold as world-class examples of the teachings of Adolf Loos.
Connecting land, people and culture
In the latest of our Practice in Profile series supported by Resene, Ralph Johns reflects on ten years of architecture and the ongoing evolution of the Isthmus studio.
Awards
ADNZ Awards: The country’s best revealed
The 2024 National ADNZ Resene Architectural Design Awards winners were announced on 1 November with a glowing family lodge receiving this year’s Supreme Award.
Architectural design innovation in Otago
Twelve projects received awards at the 2024 Otago ADNZ Resene Architectural Design Awards on Friday 30 August at a ceremony in Cromwell.
People
Adapting with nature
Isthmus Group’s Helen Kerr spoke at the 2024 World Green Infrastructure Congress about the regenerative role of green infrastructure in helping communities grow, change and adapt.
Advocating for cultural integrity in AI design
We talk to Dutch architects Sandra Baggerman and Cas Esbach about the lack of indigenous and culturally diverse data in AI image generators, and why that’s a problem.
The humanist data centre
Mitch Clifton, a data centre design specialist at Woods Bagot, writes on the need to integrate data centres into our urban spaces and how these centres can improve lives.
Function follows flashy façades and photos
Opinion: Are we leaving buildings in the lurch while the façades are still gleaming and the award still twinkling in the boardroom?