Home of the Year 2025
Small Home of the Year | City Home of the Year | Rural Home of the Year | Multi-Unit Home of the Year | Green Home of the Year | Alt & Reno Home of the Year | Readers’ Choice Award
Home of the Year is an annual programme that celebrates the country’s best new homes, and comes with a $10K prize for the overall winner.
Home of the Year is New Zealand’s highly regarded award for residential architecture, with categories to celebrate the best City Home of the Year, Small Home of the Year, Rural Home of the Year, Green Home of the Year, Alt & Reno Home of the Year, and Multi-Unit Home of the Year, each of which recognises the specific nuances of architecture in different contexts.
The overall Home of the Year winner is awarded to a home that captures a moment in time: they aren’t always the grandest, though there have been plenty of those over the years too. They are pure expressions of architectural thought, a unique intersection between a client’s brief and the designer’s vision.
Key Dates
September 2024
Entries open for Home of the Year 2025.
Details announced in the October/November issue of HOME.
December 2024
Entries close for Home of the Year 2025; judges announced.
Preliminary judging begins.
February 2025
Judging commences; finalists announced in the February/March issue of HOME.
Readers’ Choice Award voting opens.
March 2025
Awards presentation event and announcement of winners.
HOME’s Home of the Year Special (April/May issue) hits the shelves. All winners are publicly announced and published in this issue.
Home of the Decade
OUR QUEST TO AWARD NEW ZEALAND’S HOME OF THE DECADE HAS BEGUN AND WE NEED YOUR HELP.
All winners of Home of the Year from 2015 to 2025 are automatically entered as finalists, alongside wild card nominations.
We welcome nominations from architects, interior designers, builders, photographers, makers, homeowners, and anyone else who has been inspired by a single home that was designed and built in the last decade.
Nominations have now closed.
Home of the Year 2023 Winners
Home of the Year 2022
Small Home of the Year | City Home of the Year | Rural Home of the Year | Multi-Unit Home of the Year | Green Home of the Year | Interior of the Year | Readers’ Choice Award
Home of the Year is an annual programme that celebrates the country’s best new homes, and comes with a $10K prize for the overall winner.
Home of the Year is New Zealand’s highly regarded award for residential architecture, with categories to celebrate the best City Home of the Year, Small Home of the Year, Rural Home of the Year, Green Home of the Year, and Multi-Unit Home of the Year, each of which recognises the specific nuances of architecture in different contexts.
In 2022, we introduce a new category: Interior of the Year. This accolade will be awarded to a project with exceptionally considered interiors that at once complement and highlight the architectural context, and deliver a compelling individual aesthetic.
The overall Home of the Year winner is awarded to a home that captures a moment in time: they aren’t always the grandest, though there have been plenty of those over the years too. They are pure expressions of architectural thought, a unique intersection between a client’s brief and the designer’s vision.
Celebrating Home of the Year 2022
The 2022 Home of the Year awards evening was a resounding success, celebrating a rich and diverse group of projects that deliver excellence, joy, and innovation.
Revealed: The 2022 Home of the Year finalists
The finalists are revealed. View each of the finalist homes in the 2022 Home of the Year awards programme.
In partnership with
Home of the Year 2021 Winners
The Home of the Year 2021 winners were celebrated at an exclusive event in Auckland on 3 June at Lightworx Gallery by Artbay.
View our video features of the winning homes below, or pick up the June/July issue of HOME for full coverage of all the winning projects.
Home of the Year 2021 Winners
Follow the links below to view our video features of the 2021 winning homes.
City Home of the Year
Multi-Unit Home of the Year
Rural Home of the Year
Small Home of the Year
Home of the Year 2021 judging
In this travelogue, we followed the Home of the Year 2021 judges for a week in mid-March as they embarked on ambitious architectural journey around New Zealand.
The judges’ travelogue: Day five – Queenstown to Auckland
We step into a house with a naturally warm interior and designers with impeccable understanding of what it takes to create and monitor the performance of a family home.
The judges’ travelogue: Day four – Southland, Otago
Today, the judges explore Southland and Otago, discuss sustainability, designing in remote locations, and New Zealand as a whole.
The judges’ travelogue: Day three – Nelson, Christchurch, Invercargill
Today, the judges explore homes that were designed and built by architects and their friends and family – places of soulful moments, spatial experimentation and an overtly playful approach to design.
The judges’ travelogue: Day two – Hamilton, Raglan, Coromandel
It’s when we end up right behind a lonesome cow frantically trotting ahead of our van that it dawns on me: we are now judging the Rural Home of the Year category.
The judges’ travelogue: Day one – Auckland to Hamilton
This week, we follow the Home of the Year 2021 judges as they embark on an ambitious architectural journey around New Zealand.
Meet the judges
This year’s judges of the Home of the Year awards have a diverse range of skills and professional backgrounds. One is from a multi-award-winning architectural firm, another from a boutique atelier with an enviable stable of commercial and residential projects, and the third is a writer and magazine editor with significant national and international experience in the architecture/design industries, and as a jury member and awards convenor.
This trio will shortlist and select finalists in the categories of City Home of the Year, Rural Home of the Year, Small Home of the Year, Multi-Unit Home of the Year, and Green Home of the Year.
They will then spend a week on back-to-back flights — ranging from Boeings through to four-seater air taxies — back-straining (but highly picturesque) country drives, beach treks, city meanders, hill climbs, and involved in dozens of fascinating conversations to select category winners and the highly anticipated Home of the Year 2021.
Rich Naish — RTA Studio
Rich Naish is founder and design director of RTA Studio. Under his leadership, the studio’s architecture has been recognised for innovation and excellence at the highest level, nationally and internationally.
Rich is a past winner of Home of the Year (for his E-type House). His houses have also won numerous New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) National Awards, as well as an accolade at the World Architecture Festival. He has been the national convener of the NZIA awards programme, judged at the World Architecture Festival, and previously judged the Home of the Year. Rich is also a regular speaker in New Zealand and overseas.
Jessica Walker — Bureaux
Jessica Walker co-founded award-winning architecture and interior design studio Bureaux in 2010 with fellow architect Maggie Carroll. She has a reputation for crafted, character-filled buildings and interiors and has produced a diverse body of work that ranges across housing, cultural, retail, and hospitality projects. Jess has a particular interest in the realm of the home, having undertaken a master’s thesis looking at the architect’s role in homemaking.
Federico Monsalve — HOME
Federico is the managing editor of HOME. His journalism career has seen him write and broadcast nationally and internationally for highly respected media outlets in the fields of current affairs, lifestyle, arts, architecture, and design. Until recently, he was the editor of Urbis and Interior magazines. Federico was also the convener of the Interior Awards and was a judge at the 2019 World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam.
Read more about previous entrants and winners
Waiheke House by Cheshire Architects
Cheshire Architects devise a spectacular coastal home on Waiheke that carefully balances enclosure and sociability.
The social edit
The Home of the Year 2024 awards evening at Studio Italia was an event of celebration, creativity and innovation.
An evening of celebration
At an exclusive event in Auckland last month, we celebrated the 2023 Home of the Year winners and finalists.
Into the wild: a luxe cabin at the bottom of the South Island
On a southern beach where seals come ashore and kārearea hunt, this bunker-like holiday home was designed to tread lightly on the land.
In detail: Feather House
Jeremy Smith from Irving Smith Architects talks to HOME about the intricacies of Feather House, the 2021 Small Home of the Year.
Rural Home of the Year 2021: Hill to Horizon House
The 2021 Rural Home of the Year explores retreat and openness, gracefully unfolding between retired paddock and coastline.
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