Table of contents for October/November 2019 in homestyle

Sometimes it can feel as if homestyle HQ is part office, part workshop, especially when art director Juliette Wanty’s prototyping the brilliant sets she creates for our styled shoots. Pots of paint stack up on the meeting table, colour tests crowd the pinboard and large-scale materials take up residence to be prepped for transportation to the photography studio. This hands-on research and development is something we feel passionate about, because it adds an element of creation to the content we curate. If you’re curious to find out exactly what I’m talking about, flip to page 28 to see the scenes Juliette dreamed up to demonstrate new ways in which to use paint. We search the world in our pursuit of original interior ideas, and this issue I’m excited to be…

The New Mediterranean (Gestalten, $95) Crossing now from a Mediterranean garden to the crafted, earthy and summery appeal of the region’s interior aesthetic, this beauty of a book profiles architects and designers who blend the look’s authenticity with modernity, and has boundless ideas for recreating the every-day’s-a-holiday vibe at your place. Big Ideas for Small Houses by Catherine Foster (Penguin, $50) Yes, we’ve got a thing for books on small-space living, but this one’s all about little local homes and the ways in which they’ve helped New Zealanders get a foot in the door of our impenetrable housing market. Inspiration, plans and costs are included for dwellings as diminutive as 34m2 . Aēsop by Jennifer Down and Dennis Paphitis (Rizzoli, $175) Since 1987, Australian…

PLACE TO PAINT #1 The floor You know we love a painted floor, and a well-considered patterned one is a confident statement that adds tons of charisma to an otherwise straightforward space. We created this woven look using three distinct Resene shades: Resene Swiss Caramel, Resene Charcoal and Resene Crowdpleaser. The inspiration For this effect, the geometric appeal of quilted creations by New York textile designer Thompson Street Studio meets the symmetrical pleasure of weaving and wicker in colours that echo sweet tooths’ can’t-say-no flavours: nougat, caramel and chocolate. The tips Loud flooring calls for the rest of the room to be the supporting act. Stick to light, soothing colours for your walls, and furniture in blockish forms that hold their own against a large-scale repeating pattern, then take a…

Graphic designer Natasha Mead jokes that she’s filled her Auckland cottage with a sanatorium-level amount of cream and beige, but it does make for a very calming abode. She’s lived here for about four years with her writer partner Alex Braae and their two flatmates. So, Natasha, how would you describe this Freemans Bay haven? It’s very light and open, thanks to all the windows and the garden. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the inner city. It’s a beautiful house, but the external studio and garden were the biggest draw. Being surrounded by so much greenery keeps me grounded, and we love to eat in the garden in the warmer months. What do you like to surround yourself with to make you feel at home? People. Ours is a…

Louise Johansen loves to redecorate, and often does — very often, even. Eager readers of her blog Mor til Mernee (Mother of Mernee) and Instagram account @mortilmernee have watched as the walls of her 1947 villa have changed colour, the décor within them has been updated, and the kitchen has been adjusted almost annually, with new hues, tiles and cabinetry. “I’ve changed my style several times over the years, but I find peace in it every time,” says Louise, who shares the house in Hedensted, Denmark with her husband Jesper Olesen and their daughters Merle and Neel. “I never stop playing when it comes to decorating.” But recently something strange has happened — Louise has changed. In the last year, she’s made peace with the home’s interior, which in the…

Steph Headland says living with her husband Matt and their children Georgia and Harri in just a few tired rooms of their Mt Eden, Auckland villa while its renovation went on around them was the ultimate inspiration for creating the perfect ‘non-precious’ family home. “We felt like we were flatting here and that was actually quite nice. When you’ve got threadbare carpet, you’re just like, ‘Whatever — bring your bikes in, wear your dirty shoes, eat wherever you want.’ You don’t care so much, which is quite a nice way to live.” When it came to upgrading the front of the house, the couple tried very hard not to design it so they had to be too concerned about anything, because they wanted to really live here and enjoy it.…

In a meeting of creative minds, Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen of Norm Architects and Kinfolk editor-in-chief John Clifford Burns sat down to discuss their new book The Touch, coauthored by Kinfolk co-founder Nathan Williams. The Touch is all about haptic design — how do you define that term? Jonas: For me, haptic design is about understanding the bodily experience of spaces and objects. It’s a way of design thinking that incorporates all our senses. In a world that’s become predominantly visual and quantifiable, it seems the approach to design has become very monolateral. A haptic approach is also about touch, sound, smell and taste. It’s about trying to design spaces that evoke special feelings or determine certain behaviours… about emotions and how spaces make you feel. The book’s divided into five thematic…

I’m an interior designer and my husband Isaac’s a builder. We bought our Auckland home in early 2015. Although it was slightly the worse for wear, we loved its private bush setting, board-and-batten exterior, timber joinery and brass hardware, so we jumped at the opportunity to make it our own. For our renovation, we wanted to blend traditional and contemporary elements. Being surrounded by an infinite number of beautiful products and finishes every day through my work has definitely meant I’ve had to exercise a level of restraint! Taking the lead from the board-and-batten detailing, we’ve used lots of white and neutrals, feature panelling, and brass tapware and hardware to tie it all together. Our house has a very calm feel. The kitchen and living area is our little hub…

LOST IN A DAYDREAM As the shadows grow ever shorter, Città’s S/S19/20 collection, Days of Reverie, is a definite mood. The range out now blends a sense of nostalgia with the charm of a jaunt in the English countryside. Among its colours of earth and sky, and gingham and wildflower prints, the pieces our thoughts keep returning to include this dreamy Arc bed, Sove bedding and Moon lamp. cittadesign.com COOL COUPLE Handmade from sustainable organic clay, these vases, Lily (left) and Roger, stand at 77 and 100cm, making them a dashing duo in the corner of any room. Lily’s elegant and erudite in cream or terracotta, and although Roger can get a bit carried away with his mansplaining, you can’t hold it against him when he looks so suave in…

Long the most coveted material in the flooring world, solid wood is a classic beauty. But did you know that its modern engineered counterpart (made by pressing a top layer of hardwood timber veneer onto an engineered core) has the same good looks and greater stability, plus it’s installed faster, involves less wastage, and in choosing it you’re helping to decrease the amount of slow-growing hardwood timber that’s harvested to make flooring every year? Expert in engineered timber inspired by global trends, Forté Flooring is a local go-to for its incredible range, including the beautiful oak planks you see before you. If you’re starting from the ground up at your place, keep the following in mind when deciding which of their shades and styles best suits your spaces. LIGHT A…

On a trip to the US with a uni mate when he was about 22, New York blew Mark Alsweiler’s small-town New Zealand mind. While he was there, he bought a book called Beautiful Losers that featured artists including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Chris Johanson, Clare Rojas and Geoff McFetridge, and the art they were making opened up a creative pathway that still has a big influence on his work today. So, Mark, it all began in New York… I hadn’t been to a big city like that before, and seeing it made me want to live a creative life in a city with lots of different people making different things. After finishing a Bachelor of Arts majoring in design at Otago University, I was at a bit of a…

Sometimes home projects grow on you, and sometimes you can see the potential the minute you step through the door. It was a case of the latter for Gretchen Houston and her husband Blair when they came across their rundown villa in the Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn. “As soon as I walked in, I could imagine restoring the corridor into the most beautiful hallway,” says Gretchen. “I could tell the height and detail would be spectacular.” It often takes a certain amount of vision to see past the errors of the past when viewing villas with renovation potential, and Gretchen and Blair had to look far beyond the current state of this place to imagine a home they could move into with their daughter Gwyneth (and baby then on…

SCRUNCH TIMES In a shade of blue so deep you could dive into it, Kowtow’s Scrunch bag is ethically crafted from organic cotton canvas — as you’d happily expect from this fine local label committed to all things kind to people and the planet. Hurry to get your mitts on this ultra-affordable charmer that can be rocked around the clock — dressed down for day and up for night. nz.kowtowclothing.com SET & MATCH The indomitable Auckland-based founder of Curionoir, Tiffany Jeans, has compiled five of her most sought-after scents into one bewitching box. The Curiosity set includes pocket versions from the Extrait de Parfum range, letting you choose to suit your mood. curionoir.com HOT STEPPERS Like something a Solid Gold dancer might don in her downtime, these soft, sumptuous Wander…

Interconnection is a theme that sums up the kitchen in architect Eva Nash’s new home — it being the heart of the dwelling she shares with her husband David and their children Nico (7) and Aida (3), and in terms of the working relationship she enjoys with architect Kate Rogan, her co-director at their Auckland practice Rogan Nash Architects and co-designer on this build. Eva and Kate work side by side on projects including residential new builds and renovations, commercial projects and office fit-outs, so when it came to the design of Eva’s own home, between them, they could summarise the client brief fairly succinctly. “Eva is an incredibly generous host and a fabulous cook,” says Kate. “When some people say they entertain, they mean they open a bottle of…

Eden Revisited by Umberto Pasti & Ngoc Minh Ngo (Rizzoli, $125) When Italian writer and horticulturist Umberto Pasti first came to the Moroccan village of Rohuna, near Tangier, 20 years ago, an otherworldly experience saw him seized by an intense desire to stay. His wish becoming the villagers’ command, he hired a team he now considers family to help him build a home here with his French-born fashion-designer partner Stephan Janson — and a magnificent garden. A series of open-air rooms criss-crossed with pathways, this famed oasis is filled with thousands of plants rescued from construction sites, making it a sanctuary for local species threatened by progress. Wonder infuses its 25 acres in spaces such as the Bone Garden decorated with skulls, and an entire hillside devoted to…

True blue This magnetic colour has a creative pedigree through its ties to the late French artist Yves Klein, who patented his own International Klein Blue hue. Whether you call it IKB or cobalt, it’s one pretty punchy pigment that commands attention and exudes pure class and confidence. Fields of gold There’s something so sweet about the haystack vibes of the raw cotton, plaid, gingham and floral textiles and homeware springing up that make us feel like kicking back on the porch in a rocking chair. We’re not about to go full country bumpkin on you, but the wholesome naïvety is undeniably charming. Ahead with the curves The emergence of full-figured furniture with exaggerated proportions has been noted as a movement dubbed neotenic design. The vaguely human qualities of such…

Born in 2017 out of Auckland friends and co-founders Greta van der Star and Bailey Meredith’s love of lounging around, General Sleep is a favourite for sleepwear and night-to-day pieces you’ll be happy to be seen in if you happen to leave the house. How General Sleep garments feel is as important as their appearance, so central to Greta and Bailey’s success are fabrics that support movement, are hardwearing and look great, inspired by their mum’s soft old nightshirts. So Greta, where do you source your fabrics from? From the beginning it was important to us to have traceability and employ fair practices, so we took our time and did a lot of research using the Ethical Fashion Forum’s directory of companies with a conscience before finding the right maker…

It began with a tenacious pigeon, which lived with its clan in a grand Phoenix palm that dominated the driveway of this Mt Eden, Auckland home. The palm deposited great fanned fronds onto the cars below; the pigeons dropped gifts of their own. But it was the feisty bird that clung to Kate Lines’ windscreen as she flapped the wipers to and fro that was the final straw. The palm had to go. “Ripping it out meant we could get trucks up the drive, so it was the catalyst to begin our renovation,” says Kate (pictured opposite). She, her husband Matt and their children Thomas, Joseph and Zoe had lived in the concrete bungalow for five years by then. Built in the 1920s, its stucco exterior was painted an inconsequential…

Shifting to Hawke’s Bay wasn’t a planned sea change for John and Nikki McNamara, but in the process of building the first showhome for their prefab venture modhouse, they found the pace of life in Hastings and chance to live in a newly crafted home suited them to a T. After nurturing their careers as architect and interior designer respectively for more than 20 years in Auckland, and with their children Ruby and Theo having flown the nest to universities in the South Island, the timing was right for the couple to make their next move. For John, that meant realising the ideas, sketches and models he’d been exploring and refining for the past decade to develop a sustainable, prefabricated small-home concept. “We’d been looking for a location in which…

Felicity Jones’s mum was a passionate gardener who always had beautiful seasonal arrangements in their Auckland home. As a child, Felicity enjoyed picking and placing flowers too, but she didn’t really start gardening until she moved to London and into her first home with her designer husband Chris Pitts. Its small patch and her current garden in Auckland’s Grey Lynn were both inspired by the traditional English style of orchestrated chaos within a formal structure. So, Felicity, tell us more about this garden of yours… We’ve been cultivating it for 20 years now. Five years ago, I decided a dedicated cut-flower area was needed, so the lawn — the sunniest part — was dug up to make room for four raised beds. Needless to say, the kids [Oliver (now 19)…