Tabla de contenidos para Issue 101 en Urbis

There is a poem by New Zealand bard Sam Hunt featured on a wall of one of our favourite homes in this issue (Strachan Group Architects’ house on our cover and page 62). The poem – which is inspired by the house’s location, Castor Bay – begins with: “This coast again… sun rising over islands this blue May morning reefed inside the bay where sunlight floods.” It’s a simple, beautiful little phrase. It is descriptive rather than operatic, but it encompasses that local summer vibe we wanted to cater for in this issue. To that end, we trawled through homes suffused with the spirit of summer: large open spaces, internal social areas stitched immaculately with the outdoors… the works. We relived some of the most outstanding products of the year…

NIKAU CAFÉ The good folk at Wellington’s culinary institution Nikau Café have had a busy year. First there is the launch of their stunning new café Rita in Wellington’s Aro Valley, then there is this… the much awaited cookbook by the troupe’s cooking expert Helda Hains. The beautifully photographed tome explores some of the dishes that have made the locale so popular in the capital. Nineteen years of cooking in the same spot (behind Wellington’s City Gallery) has allowed Hains to cement a reputation and forge significant relationships with both consumers and local growers. “If I’m lucky, sometimes they plant special crops for me,” says Hains in the book’s introduction. These recipes seemed suffused with that same sense of longevity and history rather than fads or flashiness. And yes… there…

SHE STUDIED ARCHITECTURE and worked for top New Zealand firm Stevens Lawson Architects, she has appeared in films including The Dead Lands and Find Me a Ma-ori Bride, exhibited her oil on paper works here and internationally… and she only just turned thirty. Urbis caught up with the prolific Turei at the Auckland studio of fashion label Miss Crabb – a space she helped design – to talk art, architecture and balancing work and life as a young creative. I read that your high school art teacher said she’d ‘string you from the roof ’ if you didn’t study architecture… other than the threat, what else sparked your interest? I’d kind of grown up with building around me, but I was a total art kid and I just wanted to…

WHEN THE OWNERS of this Castor Bay house, Tom Duffett and Caroline Boot, were looking to build, they happened across the Strachan Group Architects-designed Boatsheds house in Takapuna. The stunning house, which won a national NZIA award in 2015, features black-stained vertical cedar pavilions and plywood interior walls and ceilings. “One of our neighbours recommended builder Gary Bonham, who had recently finished Boatsheds,” says Duffett. “A visit to the property was arranged, and the minute I saw it, I knew it was the look I was after.” The Castor Bay site presented a number of challenges for Strachan Group Architects (SGA). Long and thin, it runs east-west, faces south and has a cross fall of four metres towards the south. It is also surrounded by other homes on three sides…

With over 370 product developers and designers in New Zealand, Fisher & Paykel has garnered numerous local and international design awards including the prestigious Red Dot and iF Design Award. Our design heritage is founded on a pioneering spirit and a culture of curiosity that has challenged conventional appliance design to consistently deliver products tailored to human needs. For us, legacy is about looking into the future, while ensuring what we develop today is aligned to the fundamental principles of sustainable design. We are committed to ongoing research and development. Our culture is one of open innovation, which allows people to work collaboratively to find insights and ideas, which connect with our customers and respect our planet. At Fisher & Paykel we design for real life. We are curious about…

SIMON DEVITT Based in Auckland, but active throughout New Zealand, Simon specialises in architectural photography. Simon has exhibited a number of his photographs at the Gow Langsford Gallery and is the sponsor of the Simon Devitt Photography Award. He photographed the Castor Bay house on the cover and page 62. What is the best part of a photo shoot? It’s always that moment during a shoot when I’m standing away from the house or building, in the landscape resolving the context somehow. The stillness of those moments can be breathtaking. How was the Castor Bay house shoot? I love working with SGA. They are so passionate about detail. This house has an immense amount of detail. And even after the house is complete, they ensure the scene is appropriately staged…

MELBOURNE IS FAMOUS for its laneways, but it’s more known for its central city alleyways than suburban back streets, which are often underutilised and neglected. However, like the revitalisation of the city’s laneways, Melbourne homeowners are also beginning to see the value in their forgotten alleyways for the potential opportunities they can create on their property and for their contribution to the neighbourhood in general. Brickface in Richmond, Melbourne, is one such development. Designed by Austin Maynard Architects, the two-storey building at the rear of a property contains a garage, studio and rooftop garden. Functionally, it provides flexible and adaptable spaces for the homeowners; visually, it offers a sculptural wall behind the swimming pool and a robust bookend at the corner of the laneway. The clients – a family with…

Patterns that occur in nature, replicated with raw materials using the ancient art of weaving.…

Black-framed glass doors and windows create transparency through the otherwise solid house, allowing for water views from the front garden. A series of green roofs offers a soft green foreground to the Sydney Harbour backdrop. SITTING IN A PROMINENT position overlooking Sydney Harbour, Mosman House balances the generous proportions of the architecture and the monumentality of concrete construction with a focus on everyday living, comfort and informality. It is the result of a close collaboration between the architect, interior designer and client in which both the bigger picture and a fine grain of detail drove what they wanted to achieve. “In designing a house of this size and in this location, there is a temptation to be over the top in terms of scale and formality so that it doesn’t…

LAST KNOWN HOME Created for the AD Intérieurs exhibition in Paris recently, French designer Mathieu Lehanneur’s project Last Known Home is designed as a futuristic – yet also historical – refuge from the world. Mineral elements feature throughout, from the Navona travertine wall and the titanium ceiling plates through to the stone books, which seem to exist as a kind of sculptural memory. Two pieces from Lehanneur’s Ocean Memories series take centre stage in the room. The black marble coffee table with its rippled surface creates visual contrast with the pale tones of the rest of the space. The rug seems to also hint at a watery world: it is made of silk and linen in pastel shades. Curvature and open-ended shapes repeat throughout the room, such as in the…

The rule book is thrown out. Edges forgotten. No shape is out of bounds. Adventurous and bright, with plenty of curves, speaking to a generation of innovators. GET THE LOOK ON YOUR WALLS Colours from The Range fashion colours fandeck, only from www.resene.co.nz 0800 RESENE (737 363)…

“A lot of my clients constantly ask me to hide their TV. The Frame deals with that challenge quite beautifully.” Tell us about the design of your studio – what were you trying to achieve with the space? We love having a communal space as this helps a communal approach to the jobs we work on. Samples are a huge part of what we do, so the central table works really well to lay out the jobs we are working on and present to clients along with the shelving above the desks. We tend to hide what we don’t want to display so the focus is always what we are working on. We do this by the brass cabinets and mobile work stations. We also have a separate space for…

How did you get drawn towards architectural design as a career? As cheesy as it sounds, it was an idea from when I was as young as 12. I have primary school projects of floor plans drawn to scale – in crayola vivids! I guess what was a childhood and boyhood hobby has actually turned into something much more. What do you see as the cornerstone of your design ethos? It’s really two pronged. Firstly, we aim to create a sensory experience. For us, the space and aesthetic is there to shape user and viewer emotions. Design decisions are always referenced against the emotion we are creating. Secondly, innovation, that is, blending tech and science into architecture. It can be as complex as hybrid structural systems through to basics around…

THE HISTORIC VILLAGE of Nepi is, in many ways, a typical Italian town. A mere 60km from Rome, Nepi has about 9,500 inhabitants. It boasts colourful houses and narrow streets and alleys all leading to Il Duomo; the 13thcentury church of Santa Maria Assunta. In this picturesque setting and right next to Il Duomo is this townhouse, which has been totally restored by the Roman architect Massimo Adario, whose sense of understated luxury tends to inform his stunning work. “Originally, the house was dark and with many small spaces, and the couple who own [it] wanted to open it up and make it more functional,” says Adario. The project became a major restoration, where the entire interior was gutted and only the outer walls were left behind (an iron skeleton…