Table of contents for URBIS_89_201512 in Urbis

WHAT A SUBJECTIVE thing a “Best Of” list is! This year, we’ve gathered objects and spaces that we – or the experts we worked with – found to be exquisitely forged. Some were chiselled to near perfection in the quest for beauty and functionality. Others were created by communities hoping to improve their built environments. Some, I do admit, were just quirky and visceral choices. Turn to page 95 for our stellar line-up of design hits from 2015. This issue is also full of summer-time design goodness, inspiration and a few things to put on your wish list for 2016. We travelled to the Frankfurt Motor Show to bring you an extended motoring section full of road-trip and envy-worthy machines. With the help of authors and one of our favourite…

THE WHITE ROAD – A PILGRIMAGE OF SORTS By Edmund de Waal Chatto & Windus, $55 British ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s previous and highly popular book, The Hare with Amber Eyes traced the ancestry of a single object through a five-generation history of the family that owned it. Similarly, The White Road retraces history, especially in China, by describing the development of porcelain. The book is written in a personal tone and some sections read like a travel journal as the author treks through China, Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, South Carolina and Cornwall. De Waal expresses his passion for objects by saying they speak to him in a personal and almost poetic manner: “I hear objects. With objects it is possible not only to sound them, name them and make…

URBIS: You have a degree in fine arts – what was your major when you were at art school? LAUREN HARE: I went to Elam [School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland] to paint, but after the first year I majored in design as I enjoyed working within the structure of a brief and the real art of problem solving. I also completed a postgraduate in creative advertising. U: When did you make the transition to interior design and why? LH: I have always loved interior design so when I was presented with an opportunity to work on a new build, I took the plunge and left advertising and have never looked back. U: Was there a specific moment when you knew that you had made that transition, and that…

MATERIAL CREATIVE Toni Brandso, Liv Harper and Olivia Macfarlane (not pictured) are guest stylists for this issue’s Objectify . Pages 36 - 40. What was your main inspiration or overriding theme for the Objectify photo shoot? We were inspired by patterns and the organic nature of Salvation Mountain in California, and African tribal fabrics, sculptures and art. It’s a random amalgamation, but things we had been looking at that sprung to mind when we laid eyes on the fabric from James Dunlop, and a trip to Bath Street Gallery which is in our new neighbourhood of Parnell, Auckland. If you could pick one item from the shoot to keep and have in your own home, what would it be? One of the paintings by Denys Watkins. What’s been the most…

Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Ratatat December / main centres 1 There are plenty of good tunes coming to the country this summer; these two are but a drop in the aural bucket. Local psychedelic jam rockers UMO will perform in the main centres, while Brooklyn-based Ratatat will treat audiences in Auckland and Wellington. eventfinda.co.nz TSB Festival of Lights 13 December – 31 January / New Plymouth 2 Veer your road trip into Taranaki to check out this annual festival that transforms Pukekura Park into an illuminated wonderland. festivaloflights.co.nz Toioho XX Until 17 April 2016 / Palmerston North 3 A major event on the arts calendar, this series of exhibitions will see more than 150 works from galleries and private collections displayed across six venues to mark the 20th anniversary of…

BUILT ARCHITECTURE’S IGNACIO ARIZU relished the opportunity to renovate his clients’ newly purchased home in Barcelona’s Eixample district. Typical of apartments found in the affluent area (famous for Gaudi’s incomplete masterpiece, Sagrada Familia), its re-imagining was always going to be a challenge. But the Spanish architect wasn’t deterred, and with access to the building’s original, hand-drawn plans, he was inspired. “Those documents were a treasure,” he remembers, “and from them we gained a respect for the existing structure.” The fourth-level apartment is located in a 100-year-old building in the chamfered corner of a rectangular block. This configuration skews the plan along two axes, making the rooms cell-like and disconnected. Despite boasting four- metre-high ceilings the apartment suffered considerably from a lack of even light penetration. A state of general disrepair…

VICTORIAN HOMES, for all their imposing ceremony and gilded glory, struggle with contemporary aspirations of informality and a connection to light and nature. Matt Gibson Architects was charged with the task of retaining the ‘great bones’ of a two-storey terrace house while infusing it with natural light to create an urban hideaway. The architects’ desire was to create a home with a sense of theatre, with “specifically designed moments of surprise and delight providing a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of inner-city life.” Located in Albert Park, 3.5 kilometres south west of central Melbourne, the house sits snuggly on a main street in Albert Park in a row of impressive two-storey Victorian terraces that have hardly changed since construction. The site has many limitations characteristic of residential terraces, with…

SUSPENDED FOREST Taking a different slant on the usual floral arrangement and lending a summery pop of colour, whole bunches of fresh, pink tulips were suspended below cloud-like, rusted wire nests. This temporary pavilion was designed by interiors firm Mim Design and sustainable artist Joost Bakker for the Melbourne Cup Carnival. WORLD'S TOP INTERIOR Urbis recently stayed at Canberra’s awe-inspiring Hotel Hotel while researching our Style City feature about the up-and-coming capital (page 109). Coincidentally, the March Studio-designed public spaces at this inn were named World Interior of the Year at the World Festival of Interiors some weeks later. Here are some of our favourite moments within its foyer and public spaces. hotel-hotel.com.au MELBOURNE CUP’S BEST DRESSED This enchanting Lexus Design Pavilion at the recent Melbourne Cup Festival is the…

B&O BEOLAB 90 This is not the most expensive speaker made, but it may just be the greatest. To celebrate 90 years of audiophilia, Bang & Olufsen has come up with a monster. The BeoLab 90 speaker tower is 1.2 meters tall and weighs 137 kilograms. Impossibly cool looking, it allows sound to be precisely tailored to the room – meaning they can be placed anywhere and will adapt their sound to suit. B&O calls this Active Room Compensation technology – using variables like the shape of the room, furniture placement and the number of people listening to adjust each speaker’s output for the ‘perfect’ sound. Each tower has 18 speakers in it, facing in all directions, and each speaker is individually controllable via a smartphone app. They’re also ridiculously…

THE STILL POINT IN SWEENEY’S TURNING WORLD IS HER HOME – A MID-CENTURY HIDEAWAY THAT CLINGS TO A VERTIGINOUS HILL IN EASTBOURNE’S NATIVE BUSH SWEENEY IS USED to walking the tightrope between work and family. The Wellington clothing designer also juggles sons Lars (5) and Romeo (2) with the eponymous label she established in 2002. “I’m very grateful to be able to work in a creative industry. It’s a balancing act at times, but it’s wonderful sharing the journey with my family and I can’t imagine it any other way.” The still point in Sweeney’s turning world is her home – a mid-century hideaway that clings to a vertiginous hill in Eastbourne’s native bush and is accessible either via a glute-busting walk or a cable car. Sweeney and her partner…

BEST HOUSE CASTLE ROCK HOUSE CASTLE ROCK HOUSE recently received a 2015 New Zealand Architecture Award, and with good reason: its architects, Nicola and Lance Herbst and the team at Herbst Architects, repeatedly nail the New Zealand coastal vernacular with their residential designs. In this case, Castle Rock deliberately relates to a geological formation that explodes from the landscape behind this house near its site at Whangarei Heads. The house consists of two interconnected boxes in timber and stone which, in similar fashion, push up from the land and then open out to ocean vistas via terraces and carefully aligned openings. While New Zealand architects produce some incredible houses, we have selected Castle Rock because we believe that this husband-and-wife team instinctively understand what many New Zealanders want and need…