Wedged into a cliffside beside the wild harbour of Wellington’s Eastern Bays, this year’s Home of the Year winner by Stevens Lawson Architects is a masterly object full of sculpture and craftsmanship, grandeur and human scale.

Home of the Decade (2015—2025) winning firm RTA Studio has refined a Southern language of gables and barn-like forms into a coveted residential style that is equally at home in the Alps as it is in the inner city.

Tucked into the expansive alpine landscape outside Arrowtown, this home takes its cues from the rugged vernacular of Central Otago, sharpened with a distinctly contemporary edge.