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‘A piece of sculpture’: Tasman View House

Projects | The owners of this house are used to wide-spanning sea views; in a past life, they spent a lot of time sailing a yacht around the world. While not on the water, this house enjoys extensive views acros...

Summer living: New York getaway

Projects | Situated on a one-acre lot surrounded by established trees and beautiful hydrangea bushes, this traditionally styled shingle house is a classic example of a Hamptons holiday home. Like a lot of older ...

Ship’s ahoy: The Houseboat

Projects | Designed like the upturned hull of a ship, sheltering its interiors from the coastal site in Poole Harbour in southern England, The Houseboat is a light-filled, lofty home with a difference. / Its la...

Bardon House: Lakeside lodge

Projects | While surrounded by beautiful views and with opportunities for wilderness outdoor activities in all directions, this Wanaka house is overlooked by the higher-sited homes across the road. To counter th...

Fresh palette: The Rabbit Patch

Projects | Located in the suburb of Burnside in Christchurch, The Rabbit Patch is a purpose-built preschool that operates on the Reggio Emilia philosophy of learning, which includes seeing the learning environme...

Lakeside hideaway

Projects | Bellbirds sing and kereru roost in the native trees surrounding this hideaway near Queenstown. Located on the road to Glenorchy, within a stone’s skip from a calm bay in Lake Wakatipu, this site calle...

Nature play

Projects | An aspirational ideology was the basis for the design of Kākāpō Creek Children’s Garden. The clients, a teacher and a child psychologist, wanted to break away from the usual institutionalized nature o...

Making buildings smarter and safer: the Facilities Integrate trade show

Review | Those who attended New Zealand’s first Facilities Integrate trade show could be forgiven for thinking they’d stumbled into a technology symposium. Automation and digitalisation were key themes of this...

Sharing is caring

Practice | We’ve come a long way from the offices depicted in the TV series Mad Men. Not only are mid-morning whiskies, never-ending cigarettes and ‘friendly’ bottom pats frowned upon but we have also seen workp...

Through the looking glass

Projects | It’s been three years in the making and Tantalus Estate in Onetangi Valley has finally opened its doors to customers. I arrive just before lunchtime on a Thursday and a few keen punters are there to t...

Feminine perspectives: part one

People | Why do women dominate in this field? One of the attractions of interior design or interior architecture as a career is its openness and flexibility. This applies to both the kinds of project interior ...

Architects in Profile: Assembly Architects

People | Camille Khouri met with husband-and-wife directors Justin and Louise Wright to talk about the firm’s beginnings and their design process. Camille Khouri (CK): You met while studying architecture at Vict...

Black mirrors: part two

Review | Q&A: Justin Wright of Assembly Architects, Queenstown / What system do you use? / Justin Wright (JW): We’re using Oculus Rift for the VR with Revit and the thing that connects them is Enscape, which ...

Bare bones: Hallensteins

Projects | Designer Mark Gascoigne has fond memories of the historic Lewis Eady building on Auckland’s Queen Street. As teenagers on school holidays, he and his bandmates would go there to study sheet music in t...

Hidden retreat: Mt Maunganui House

Projects | If you were standing on the beach below this house, you wouldn’t have much of a clue it was there – that is unless you happened to climb the protected sand dunes that lie in front of it. Eva Nash of ...

Vogel’s Revival

Projects | Dunedin City Council has big plans. Two years ago, the revamped Dunedin Centre opened, combining three historic civic buildings into a world-class convention centre. The Octagon and Queens Gardens are...

Sparking a fire

Projects | I recently heard the story of a mother telling her young daughter that mobile phones had not been around when she was a child. The daughter replied incredulously: how did you google? Indeed, mobile ph...

Inward gaze: Heartland

Projects | Take the lift one floor up from the bustle of Westfield Newmarket and you arrive here, at the new corporate offices of Heartland Bank. There is concurrently a feeling of calm and a sense of buzzing ac...

Buon appetito

Projects | It’s Wednesday night in Auckland’s Britomart, and Amano, the newest restaurant on Tyler Street’s hot row, is buzzing. This is just as well, because the restaurant and its adjoining bakery of the same ...

Sleight of hand

Projects | It is hard to think of a more apt name for Whoa! Studios than the moniker it has been given. The initial reaction when entering the complex is one of astonishment – even for someone a couple (ahem) of...

Home with Hoppen

Projects | This year, Kelly Hoppen MBE is celebrating 40 years as a designer. Astoundingly, she had her first interior design client at the age of 16, renovating a kitchen for a family friend. This was a learnin...

Lovingly crafted: Courtyard House

Projects | One of three cottages on the side of Mount Victoria – built in 1887 for workers in a nearby quarry – this house had been altered a number of times before it came to the attention of Judi Keith-Brown a...

Quietly modern: Mahurangi House

Projects | A well-frequented holiday home for a couple close to retirement, this property is accessed from the ridge of the hill on what is known as Scott’s Peninsula in Mahurangi East, north of Auckland. The ho...

Fortified luxury

Projects | Located on the edge of Lake Taupō and with views across the revered, Jack Nicklaus-designed Kinloch Club golf course to the central plateau, Kinloch Lodge is highly exposed to wind, which funnels up t...

Richness in texture: Westmere House

Projects | Turn-of-the-century homes such as this one in the city-fringe Auckland suburb of Westmere often have a grand sense of street presence and appeal. This is accentuated in this home by the stairs leading...

The living bathroom

Review | We’re seeing more and more stunning bathroom designs in New Zealand houses. Try architect Paul Clarke’s translucent glass shower box that’s protected from public view only by the neighbour’s hedge. Or...

The living kitchen

Review | Braver, more personalised spaces are restoring our love of the kitchen, reflecting what the kitchen has always been – the heart of the home. Here, your character should be apparent in the design, bold...

Creative capital

Projects | As machines increasingly take over humanity’s more traditional and mundane tasks, creative thinking could be our last bastion against unemployment, poverty, and general malaise and boredom. That is wh...

Golden glow: Rhodes House

Projects | Art is the driver behind this highly detailed and shining new home in the Christchurch suburb of Merivale. Built to replace an historic double-storeyed villa demolished after the Canterbury earthquake...

Sweet isolation: Wyuna hideaway

Projects | Wyuna Preserve near Glenorchy is “at the bottom of the world and the end of the road”, says Mason & Wales architect Hamish Muir, and that is one of the main appeals of the development for clients who ...