A relatively modest-scale courtyard home that’s both welcoming and well connected to its sloping site. It takes craft and materiality serious
A great response to an urban context in post-earthquake Christchurch. Impressive masterplanning which includes the creation of bump spaces and community creating zones.
The repurposing of a church and its hall into an active, quirky, fun family home that respects its history yet offers something new.
Concealed on a bush-clad hillside site above Piha, the dark facade of this home mimics the tones of the ironsand on the beach below.
This family home, on the edge of Cox’s Bay Reserve in Westmere, Auckland, was conceived as a place of privacy — a contemporary urban abode incorporating considered moments of whimsy.
This home on a golf course in Mangawhai, designed by Studio John Irving, is inspired by an international, relaxed expression of luxury and leisure.
Perched on a cliff above Red Beach in Whangaparoa, this house of blackened concrete and waxed steel delivers an unexpected lightness of form.
Marrying the elegance and style of New York with the outdoors lifestyle of Auckland, this elegant Remuera house delivers the best of both worlds.
This home on Moonlight Bay Road hangs perilously above the Tasman Sae a mere five minutes’ drive from downtown Raglan.
This house by the lake is an expression of both its alpine context and the stylistic DNA of its designers.
On an enviable Northland site, this family home is a place of elegance and light – a sculptural addition to the rural landscape.
To the west, black sand dunes stretch out to meet the Tasman Sea as it hits land; to the east, dense pohutukawa and kanuka sweep up the hills that give a boundary to this rugged coastline.
Raised above the ground, this Auckland house of concrete, cedar, bronze and steel reimagines coastal living in the city.
In the foothills of Karioi, dark cedar cloaks a home surrounded by lush greenery in a vast and encompassing landscape.
This Auckland home is made up of a trio of individual but allied cubic forms using terracotta, corrugate, and a polycarbonate that positively glows in the dark like an urban lantern.
On the shores of Sydney Harbour, New Zealand–born Australian architect Richard Archer devised a home of connections with the water and city beyond
The interior flow of this waterfront, central Auckland apartment has been reimagined by Four Walls Architecture with flow and minimalism in mind.
This North Shore home by JCA Studio is sandwiched between two different layers of building code.
New Zealand’s second apartment complex to have ever achieved the top Homestar rating is an urban experiment focused on people and their place in the land, rather than strictly about architectural form.
From the street, this elegant white house looks like a close cousin of its neighbours. Two peaked gables and a verandah with a bull-nosed roof give a shout-out to the surrounding villas. But all is not as it seems.
On a prominent corner site in central Christchurch, a cuboid brick house bridges the divide between residential and commercial.
On a steep, narrow site in Wellington, this family home cascades down over various levels, connected by a central spine to the north.
A family-centric, semi-courtyard home with an internal, slow, staggered reveal takes pride in its privacy and as an entertainment mecca.
Unfolding across two visually distinct levels, this holiday home on the shore of Lake Rotoiti is envisioned as a winter house — a concrete bunker of sorts nestled into the hillside.
Coastal locations call for special consideration of material and performance. In this case, on a farm on a clifftop in Northland, the site is exposed and the elements are harsh.
Pointing due north, The Dart is a direct and simple response to the topography of Mangawhai’s Bream Tail Farm.
On a clifftop that makes up part of the expansive and undulating land of Mangawhai’s Bream Tail Farm, this sculptural holiday home responds beautifully to its rural and coastal environs.
Inspired by a heritage church, this suburban Christchurch home uses its sinuous form for both impact and functionality.
Bounded by farmland, and beneath a simple gabled form, this home is designed around layered moments of unexpected eccentricity. Surrounded by Cantabrian farmland, the home
AW Architects has designed a house in Bendemeer with three, very distinct volumes and equally diverse personalities: the birdwatcher, the socialite, and the sheep shearer who’s scrubbed up well.
This certified passive house is the sum of many parts — some conflicting, others converging; but as one, the innate tensions deliver an enviable and powerful presence.
A high-performing holiday home in Wanaka plays with height and light, compression and expansion.
We spoke to architect James Warren of Upoko Architects about the challenges, design, and why tiny homes are gaining popularity.
We spoke to builder Sam McGregor about the tensions and similarities between rammed-earth and passive house methodologies.
A lone Japanese maple defines the seasons in this Wanaka Home. It sits in an intimate courtyard, surrounded by gently sloping rooftops that reach out to the peaks beyond.
On a southern beach where seals come ashore and kārearea hunt, this bunker-like holiday home was designed to tread lightly on the land.
This coastal cabin in Mangawhai Heads has a lot going for it. With 270-degree views out across the ocean and back towards the Brynderwyns, it’s
We speak to Wellington architect Amanda Bulman of Three Line Architecture who designed Echo House, a certified Passive House on the Kapiti Coast.
The 2021 City Home of the Year, House on Takapuna Beach by CAAHT Studio, met the challenge of the fishbowl effect, as beach goers and dog walkers promenade the sand beyond the site’s border.
New Zealand residential architecture is dominated by the use of timber, both as an exterior cladding and joinery material, and for internal detailing — and there’s good reason for that.
HOME and Peter Fell present: A Modern Stone, an exploration of concrete in the 2021 Home of the Year, Black Quail House by Bergendy Cooke.
With the sun on its bow and the community at its stern, this is a house in which the elements are always front of mind.
The 2021 Rural Home of the Year explores retreat and openness, gracefully unfolding between retired paddock and coastline.
A mature and restrained response to an awe-inspiring location. The architect has combined a wide range of influences — from Sri Lankan to her own, impressive international career — to achieve a quintessentially local response to site, context, and history.
A challenging tight suburban site competently handled via good planning, excellent control of views and nice separation of guest quarters from the main house by bridge.
Although modest in size and budget, this Auckland multi-generational home puts the client at its heart while at the same time future-proofing the asset for any potential uses that might eventuate.
It takes a certain level of daredevilry and nous to convince a client to build a two-bedroomed home for a family of five.
There’s anarchy in Avondale and it looks a lot like Eames, it sounds a bit like Joey Ramone, and it has its heart set on placemaking.
On the edge of a bluff at Palliser Bay, this isolated holiday home stands firm in a sparse landscape.
Mário Luz devises a simple form — three cedar boxes anchored by a central concrete spine — that settles effortlessly into a flat, rural Cantabrian landscape.
Wellington architects Bonnifait + Giesen explore their long-standing fascination with prefab and show how this Gisborne home fits snugly within that evolution.
On a typical Westmere street, this black-clad double-gabled home stands tall — unrecognisable from the original bungalow whose bones were used to form the basis of an extensive renovation.
Promising spectacular views and extreme weather conditions, New Zealand’s alpine architecture considers protection and connection, refuge and openness, with a material palette that reflects the environment harmoniously.
Eight villa renovations in Auckland and Wellington deliver more than meets the eye, and a considered symbiosis between old and new.
Approaching Jerram Tocker Barron Architects to design a new house on one of Nelson’s steepest streets put the owners on a trajectory to conjuring up an intriguing, diamond-pattern facade.
There’s something confronting and powerful about looking out to the horizon and seeing nothing but the ocean, knowing the next major landmass is thousands of kilometres away.
Michael O’Sullivan folds the sun into an arc — a beautifully curved pavilion that responds to a mature garden on a site just north of Christchurch’s central city.
Pastoral stone barns and a black steel butterfly find common ground on an idyllic plateau above Lake Wakatipu.
On a Mangawhai golf course, a glass-box pavilion is ruptured by three inverted cones. Pip Cheshire discusses the ideas and process that turned this seemingly simple concept into something entirely magnetic.
There’s something about clifftop homes in New Zealand. Maybe it’s a sense of living on the edge or the desire to find the most picturesque spot to watch the sunrise. Here are five clifftop homes where the architect has done justice to the dramatic surroundings.
A difficult, yet awe-inspiring site called for a radical solution: breaking a Bay of Islands holiday bach in two.
Lovell & O’Connell Architects devises a rhythmic form that pays homage to a tight Wellington site.
Wrapped in corrugate and spanning just under 110m², this unassuming home on a hill above the small town of Luggate is powerful beyond its volume.
Designed and built by family members, this house in Leigh is steeped in heritage and ancestry.
Tim and Alison Hay first occupied this home around 15 years ago. They had bought the site in north-west Auckland three years earlier when it was an old orchard with a number of paddocks.
John Irving creates a home that falls away to the ocean in Northland. It’s a bit Palm Springs, this house. It’s a bit casual, and it’s a bit dramatic — but only in just the right amounts.
On a bend in the road in a historic area of Remuera, Auckland, this large site had been mostly unused for decades. An original 1930s bungalow had a certain charm, but its layout and orientation didn’t lend itself to contemporary family life — or make the most of the site.
On the divide between suburban street and wild dunescape, Brian White carves a retreat from a singular form.
The nickname “swamp house” expresses the home’s proximity to the marshy paddocks resting below it on the Crown Range between Queenstown and Wanaka but it
Bach living is a stripped-back approach to life: family time spent eating, playing board games and puzzles in the evening, and during the day getting outside and enjoying what the natural environment has to offer – water sports, backyard cricket and mountain biking.
A spacious Mid-Century modern-inspired home in Orakei proves that you don’t need a huge amount of land to have four bedrooms and multiple living spaces, particularly when less than half of the home touches the ground.
It’s a familiar story: when youngsters enter the picture, the excitement of the big-city dream tends to pale. Childhood memories of beaches, open space and
A Kerr Ritchie–designed home influenced by a love for the outdoors. Liisa hand-made a flag that read “Boys aboard”. The idea was to hoist it onto the mast of their catamaran while approaching a new port, thus alerting other boatie families that young children had arrived and any form of socialising would be welcomed.
Claude Megson’s unique contribution to New Zealand architecture had almost disappeared from view when this house, his masterpiece, was saved from demolition. These days, its
On a leafy site in the Waikato, Tane Cox crafts a subtle home for three generations.
This Kiwi bach was designed as a response to the environment and history of the Coromandel. Discover how this home reflects its surroundings.
On a leafy site in the Waikato, Tane Cox crafts a subtle home for three generations Ben Lee had just finished building four houses on
[jwp-video n=”1″] Our annual Home of the Year award is New Zealand’s most prestigious architectural prize, with a cheque of $15,000 going to the winning
Faced with a small budget and big design ideas, the PAC Studio team sweated each and every detail, seeking the most efficient plan possible to
With a brief for a home without a garden that sat amongst the vines, Stuart Gardyne discusses how he adopted an elemental design for this
Architect Ben Daly rehabilitates a farm building with a long family history on the Canterbury Plains. He discusses why he chose to make a shearing
We spoke to Louise Wright from Assembly Architects about her recent build in Central Otago which has drawn inspiration from mid-century architecture Q&A with Louise
Modernist and elemental, this house in a Marlborough vineyard by Stuart Gardyne proves that country living need not be rustic “A paddock with grapevines on
Despite this Kaipara Harbour home’s modest budget, PAC studio team managed to create an elegantly rural space for this Auckland commuter In recent years, aspiring
Assembly Architects drew on lightweight Californian modernism to craft this elegant mountain retreat The privilege of living in Central Otago’s dramatic landscape often means making
Originally built in the 1960s and left unused for decades, this farm building on the Canterbury Plains is another masterful revival by architect Ben Daly
Tricky site limitations meant the architects of this home needed to get creative with its design. Discover how they achieved such a light and airy
Paul and Sue Webber found the perfect furniture for their multi-generational Tauranga holiday home; in their son’s furniture showroom – Tim Webber Design Paul Webber—
Lance and Nicola Herbst take us inside one of their original designs: a 20-year-old bach on Great Barrier Island Q&A with architects Nicola and Lance
Sitting on fairly public site, this Waiheke Island holiday used clever design and thoughtful material choices to quietly slip from view Q&A with architect John
Perched on a hill above the tiny coastal settlement of Ligar Bay, this two-tiered bach was designed to capture the view in absolute purity, playing with a dialogue that pushes and pulls between solidity and transparency.
Designed to merge into its coastal environs, this island home utilises board and batten cedar cladding to create a gentle visual rhythm that moves gracefully between indoors and out.
Utilising the existing design language of a mid-century modern home in Remuera, Johnston Architects and Bespoke Interior Design set about redesigning a pool house and creating an outdoor room, resulting in a trio of interconnected areas spanning indoors and out.
During a visit to Waiheke a decade or so ago, an architect was struck by a simple, refined sculpture and the way that its ad hoc form, created from a roll of corrugated iron, twisted down a hillside, creating and enclosing spaces.
On a prominent street corner in Grey Lynn bordering the heritage zone, this rectilinear addition presents a new and mostly closed face — a bold architectural statement that gives way to refined interior spaces.
Envisioned as a base camp for outdoor activities in the vast expanse of Canterbury’s high country, this compact abode is cut from the cloth of the traditional A-frame, and woven with a decidedly modern spin of colour and texture that echoes the alpine environment.
Best known for synthesising and reimagining the humble bach, Herbst Architects has modified its style for this impressive city home on Auckland’s North Shore.
Perched on a hill above the tiny coastal settlement of Ligar Bay, this two-tiered bach was designed to capture the view in absolute purity, playing with a dialogue that pushes and pulls between solidity and transparency.
Designed to merge into its coastal environs, this island home utilises board and batten cedar cladding to create a gentle visual rhythm that moves gracefully between indoors and out.
