GLOBAL VILL AGES with Guest Editor
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THE GLOBAL VILLAGES ISSUE 52.
70.
82.
96.
114.
126.
THE BARBICAN
BONDI
GENEVA
NEW YORK
GREY LYNN
Markman Ellis & Rebecca Beasley's Modernist marvel
Derek Henderson is happiest going nowhere in Sydney
Bertrand and Khalid Audoin's Swiss bliss
Tracey Ryans creates villages wherever he goes
Kelmarna Gardens in Auckland shows green is good
STUYVESANT TOWN
Valery Gherman's towers in a park
CONTENTS
David Moreland's 'Shadow' mirrors play with symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes. Photograph by Evie Mackay. For more, see p.30.
28. WARM WELCOME
Loretta, a delicious new addition to the capital's Cuba Street 30. FRESH ANGLES
ART & DESIGN 19. ELEGANCE & GRIT
Michael Lett moves his Auckland gallery 23. DESIGN FINDS
Design-minded objects of desire
Designer David Moreland looks to offshore markets
EXTRAS
32. RESTORING FAITH
154. SUBSCRIPTIONS
Two religious buildings in Christchurch are born again
41. IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
The enduring spirit of an Auckland ‘hood
34. LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
41. ONE HOME'S STORY
The best from this year's New York furniture fair
Karen Walker writes about the history of her home 141. A VIEW FROM MY WINDOW
A photo essay of global outlooks
10 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
Subscribe and save 156. STYLE SAFARI
HOME’s upcoming design store tour in Christchurch 162. MY FAVOURITE BUILDING
Mikhail Gherman likes a gentlemanly Auckland classic
My idea ϔ freedom.
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CONTRIBUTORS ARCH MACDONNELL
SAM EICHBLATT
PATRICK REYNOLDS
This issue looks different. What have you changed and why? Because this is a special issue with Karen Walker as guest editor, we thought the ‘Global Villages’ theme was a good chance to deploy a different layout strategy. We opted for image-led doublepage spreads to mark the dramatic shifts in location in cinematic style through the issue. We’ve used Futura Stencil as a headline font and full sentences as headlines rather than two or three words as we normally do. We also loosened the way we arrange images on the page: sometimes they overlap or nestle at the edges of a spread. Finally, we had some fantastic photographs to work with, so we ran long with some of the layouts to allow ourselves plenty of space to tell the story of, for example, a magnificent piece of Brutalism like the Barbican in London.
You covered the New York furniture fair for us and visited the towers of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town for this issue. Do you think it would be possible to get anything of Stuy Town’s scale built in New York these days? Could developments like it be a solution to housing woes in many cities or is the whole development a bit scorched-earth? Stuy Town is a real product of its time. These days you can’t just bulldoze an entire community to make way for another community, and the fact its founders were openly prosegregation didn’t help. It’s still under fire now, with residents both old and new unhappy with the way it’s run by Tishman Speyer’s creditors, for whom it’s basically an enormous, cashhungry white elephant.
You got to hang out at your friends’ place at the Barbican in London for this issue. Given that the theme of this issue is ‘Global Villages’, how do you think the Barbican measures up as one? Brutalist housing blocks have acquired a bad rap. The Barbican is wonderful but really one of a kind, unrepeatable. The location is extraordinary but only became available in the heart of medieval London because of wartime bombing clearing the site. Its integration with multiple Tube lines (even more soon as it sits above a brand-new Crossrail station) and wonderful cultural amenity like the Guildhall School of Music and Drama makes it an extraordinarily complete world. The heavy massing of the forms is mad, frankly: too tough for the English climate and only workable because of the high tone of the neighbourhood. It could too easily feel threatening in any other context.
Our art director shook up the magazine’s design for this special ‘Global Villages’ issue.
Your design work on our book, Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938 to 1977 just won Best Book at the PANZ Book Design Awards. Pleased? We were delighted! We loved working on that project because the homes that feature in the book are so beautiful and innovative and thoughtful. What else are you working on at the moment? We are working on a new book with artist John Reynolds, a barbecue cookbook with Josh Emett, a series of wine labels for a Waipara winery and a branding/packaging project for drikolor, a revolutionary new paint product in a dry powder form.
Our New York-based writer visited city and country for three stories in this issue.
You also went upstate to Rhinebeck, which looks like something completely magical in our photographs (p.96). It was! My day running around upstate New York with Tracey was hilarious as well. I woke up the next morning and thought, “Did that really just happen? Did I really just hang out in a house on the edge of a waterfall with this man?” What else is going on for you in New York at the moment? I love the crazy, sweaty summer and bicycling around NYC, but mostly, I’m leaving town. I’m about to go on my first real holiday since I went freelance full-time five years ago, which is a little terrifying because I’ll be sailing around the Virgin Islands with no wi-fi for eight days. Then I’m away for work, travelling up the west coast of California and to Yosemite National Park, and after that, curating an exhibition of New Zealand art and design in New York.
The photographer visited London to shoot that Modernist marvel, the Barbican (p.52).
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You live in Auckland. Wouldn’t it be good to have a few Barbicans here? It’s absolutely what Auckland needs in the sense of higher-density urban housing options with well-designed apartments and communal spaces, and especially the integration with high-quality transit and arts venues. But not Brutalist in form – that moment has passed. What else are you working on at the moment? I’ve just finished a book with Nicole Stock on the bungalow, those proto-modern houses of the inter-war era, that’ll be released later in the year. I’m teaching at the School of Architecture at the University of Auckland, and I’m delivering the annual Block lecture on architecture soon. Otherwise I’ve been shooting exciting new architectural projects around the country.
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HE 0 8 1 4 _ C_ COV E R_ 1
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Editor Jeremy Hansen
A gardener tends his plot at Auckland’s Kelmarna Gardens, photographed by Darryl Ward. For more, see p.114.
Guest Editor Karen Walker Art Director Arch MacDonnell Inhouse Design
GLOBAL VILL AGES with Guest Editor
Karen Walker
Senior Designer Sarah Gladwell Inhouse Design Designer Oliver Worsfold Inhouse Design
AUG/SEP 2014 $10.90 INC GST
The cover of our special ‘Global Villages’ issue features photographs by (clockwise from top left) Emily Andrews in New York (four images), Nicole Bachmann in Geneva, Derek Henderson in Sydney and Patrick Reynolds in London.
Publisher Lisa Ralph Commercial Director Paul Gardiner Group Sales & Marketing Manager Amber Ardern
Editorial Assistant Fiona Williams
Postal address HOME New Zealand Bauer Media Group Private Bag 92512 Wellesley Street Auckland 1141 New Zealand
Commercial Sales Manager Liezl Hipkins-Stear lhipkins@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2873 Classified Advertising Kim Chapman classifieds@xtra.co.nz +64 7 578 3646 Brand Manager Ingrid Frisk ifrisk@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2844 Events and Sponsorship Manager Jessica Allan
Group Production Manager Lisa Sloane
Stylist/Designer Samantha Totty
Editorial Office Bauer Media Group Shed 12, City Works Depot 90 Wellesley St Auckland New Zealand homenewzealand@ bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2739
Chief Executive Officer Paul Dykzeul
Financial Business Analyst Ferozza Patel
Senior Stylist/Designer Kendyl Middelbeek
Subscription Enquiries magshop.co.nz/home 0800 MAGSHOP or 0800 624 746 magshop@magshop.co.nz +64 9 308 2721 (tel) +64 9 308 2769 (fax) Bulk/Corporate Subscriptions corporates@magshop.co.nz +64 9 308 2700
Production Co-ordinator Clare Pike
Contributors Jo Bates Sam Eichblatt Mikhail Gherman Amelia Holmes Majka Kaiser Katie Lockhart Maria Majsa Emily Somerville-Ryan Photographers Emily Andrews Nicole Bachmann Guy Frederick Derek Henderson Melanie Jenkins Evie Mackay Paul McCredie Patrick Reynolds Mark Smith Darryl Ward
Advertising Auckland Liezl Hipkins-Stear lhipkins@bauermedia.co.nz +64 9 308 2873 Sydney Massey Archibald marchibald@ bauer-media.com.au +61 2 8268 6273 Printer Webstar Distributor Netlink Distribution Company HOME New Zealand is subject to copyright in its entirety and the contents may not be reproduced in any form, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher. All rights reserved in material accepted for publication, unless initially specified otherwise. All letters and other material forwarded to the magazine will be assumed intended for publication unless clearly labelled “not for publication”. We welcome submissions of homes that architects or owners would like to be considered for publication. Opinions expressed in HOME New Zealand are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of Bauer Media Group. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. ABC average net circulation, April 2013 to March 2014: 11,286 copies ISSN 1178-4148
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We were in Milan to celebrate 20 years of Linteloo at their vibrant African-themed party. Staying true to ‘the feel-good factor’ has seen this Dutch company prosper and become a hit in New Zealand. Linteloo’s talent with wood can be seen in Akiro is a new, largesized table by Roderick Vos. It is technically quite innovative in that the table top doesn’t flex despite
only being supported by its four legs. This resulted in a slim, elegant looking table top. Paired with Model ‘D’ chair by Bart Vos you would be led to believe they were made for each other. Mike Thorburn Managing Director, ECC
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Visit our new website homemagazine.co.nz @homenewzealand, @_jeremyhansen facebook.com/home.nz.mag @homenewzealand
Photography / Mark Smith
Photography / Mark Smith
EDITOR’S LETTER
Top left Guest editor Karen Walker and I check layouts for this issue. Top right Toby Curnow from Inhouse, me and Karen Walker creative director Mikhail Gherman. Above left Art director Arch MacDonnell from Inhouse, Karen and me. Above right Arch, Sarah Gladwell and Oliver Worsfold of Inhouse talk through a layout with Karen.
Every year our August/September issue explores the connections between fashion and architecture. This year, we’ve done things a little differently by inviting fashion designer Karen Walker to be our guest editor. When I first spoke to Karen about this back in April, she immediately said yes, then asked me what the gig might involve. I had no preconceptions about how it might work, so she and her husband, creative director Mikhail Gherman, and I met and talked about what kind of issue we could create together. Karen had spent her summer holidays reading Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow’s book, Urban Village: The Story of Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary’s Bay, and had been fascinated with the story of the history of her neighbourhood. This led to a discussion on the global growth of cities, and how it has been accompanied by a simultaneous desire for a village-style life within them, where people live in close proximity to their work and as many other amenities as possible. We decided to explore this theme by featuring friends of Karen and Mikhail’s in cities around the world and talking to them about the village-style lives they’ve created, whether it be in Geneva, Sydney, Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town, London’s marvellously Brutalist Barbican Estate, or on idyllic Grasmere Farm in upstate New York. (You can read more about our approach in Karen’s own editor’s letter on p.43.) It would have been entirely acceptable for Karen – who is, after all, running a genuinely global fashion empire – to go into remote-control mode and let us do all the work, but she’s been a wonderfully hands-on collaborator, generating ideas large and small, doing interviews, reviewing layouts, writing an eloquent story about the history of her own home, and running an exacting eye over every page. In short, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’m very proud of this issue, and I’m grateful to Karen and Mikhail for so generously sharing their time, energy and enthusiasms with us. –Jeremy Hansen, Editor
We’re delighted that our book, Modern: New Zealand Homes from 1938 to 1977, won the Gerard Reid Award for Best Book at the recent Publishers’ Association of New Zealand Book Design Awards. As many of you already know, the book was published by Random House last October, and features 24 marvellous Modernist New Zealand homes. The book also won the awards for Best Illustrated Book and Best Typography. This recognition is a great tribute to Arch MacDonnell, Sarah Gladwell and the rest of the team at Inhouse, who also design every issue of our magazine. Their design perfectly captures the warmth, humanity and sense of innovation of the homes that feature in the book. And while I don’t want this to sound like an Oscars speech, it’s also a good opportunity to thank the owners and architects of the homes in the book for their generosity in allowing us to publish them, as well as Random House publishing director Nicola Legat and the book’s 29 contributors for feeling as passionate about showcasing these great works of architecture as we do.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 17
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Works from the estate of L.Budd hang in Michael Lett's new gallery space. The skylights, covered over in a previous renovation, have now been restored.
ELEGANCE & GRIT
An Auckland gallery returns to K Road.
HOME You’ve moved to a new building just off Auckland’s Karangahape Road. Why the move, and what attracted you to this space? MICHAEL LETT It was becoming clear that our location on Great North Road was about to become very compromised and that we should keep an eye out for a new home. After several months of searching I had a call from a friend of a friend about the former ANZ bank on K Road. The space was too good to be true, with the elegant feel of a European apartment paired with the grit of a cruise club in the basement. I felt that it opened up a number of possibilities for the artists that I work with.
What did you need to do to the space to get it ready for occupation? Until recently, the space had been bank offices and as far as I'm aware, it hadn't been publicly accessible for several decades. Almost all of the building's original features were hidden beneath carpet, tiles and lino and a false ceiling of suspended tiles. The stunning skylights had also been decommissioned. It’s a real credit to the new owner of the building that the first thing he wanted to do was to restore the space and return it as much as possible to its original state. Nathaniel Cheshire worked on a series of drawings for us. The brief was to make it look like we had hardly touched the space, and to
give us the best walls and best light possible. Dajiang Tai from the Cheshire Architects' studio has done the most amazing job of considering every detail. The original bank vault is still in the basement – how are you going to use this space? The basement presents a wonderful counterpoint to the elegance of the first floor, and a number of our artists are already champing at the bit to present work in the space. People have been predicting the gentrification of Karangahape Road for decades, but it has stubbornly retained its raffishness. Your gallery was once down the road and you lived above it. Has the street changed at all in the few years you’ve been away? It’s nice to be back, and while in a way it is the same old K Road, it also feels a bit darker than it did previously. There has been a real return to the strip’s red-light past, with a couple of new mega-clubs finding homes on the street. We’re now neighbours with Mermaids.
TEXT / Jeremy Hansen PHOTOGRAPHY / Patrick Reynolds
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 19
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Michael Lett 312 Karangahape Road (entrance on East Street) Auckland 09 309 7848 michaellett.com
Left The gallery's new office space features tall shelves and an artwork by Julian Dashper at left. The timber 'AX' chair is by Peter Hvidt & Orla Mølgaard Nielsen. Below The bank's original vault downstairs is used for exhibitions. This video work is by popular productions.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 20
Above Michael Lett (left) and Andrew Thomas play ping-pong on a table that is part of the exhibition 'The Estate of L Budd'.
Auckland: 19 Earle St, Parnell, Auckland | 09 309 0500 | auckland@backhousenz.com Wellington: 12 Kaiwharawhara Rd, Wellington | 04 499 8847 | wellington@backhousenz.com
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Cloudy silver shades meld with spots of celestial blue.
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jacket by Acne, $1300 from Scotties, shop.scottiesboutique.co.nz 6 / ‘Angels’ straw hat, $89 from Ruby, rubynz.com 7 / ‘Nuvola 09’ chair by Paola Navone for Gervasoni, $11,840 from ECC, ecc.co.nz 8 / 'Mr Clamshell' bag by Deadly Ponies, $350 from Deadly Ponies, deadlyponies.com 9 / Potted sansevieria, $52 from BioAttic, bioattic.co.nz. Edited by Amelia Holmes.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 23
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WEAR IT WELL
Drape, pin, place, plate or illuminate these fashionable pieces.
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3 / Wool blanket by Godmother Stansborough, $445 from Everyday Needs, everyday-needs.com 4 / Porcelain pot lamp, $519 from Citta Design, shop.cittadesign.com 5 / Sterling
silver garnet pin, $255 from Crane Brothers, crane-brothers.com 6 / 'Benson' coffee table by Rodolfo Dordoni for Minotti, $15,145 from ECC, ecc.co.nz 7 / Shell belt by Dries Van Noten, $485 from Scotties, shop.scottiesboutique.co.nz 8 / ‘Cocoon’ wool bouclé coat by Eugénie, $778 from Eugénie, eugenie.co.nz. Edited by Amelia Holmes.
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IN THEIR ELEMENT
Understated design finds that don't need to shout. 6
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Below left and right The space that was to become Loretta was stripped right back to its shell, then reformed using the film A Single Man as a starting point for design.
Right The kitchen was designed by Parsonson Architects to be part of the dining room, enabling bar staff to work alongside the chefs and patrons to enjoy the scene.
WARM WELCOME
A Cuba Street eatery brings new flavours to dining in the capital. INTERVIEW / Jeremy Hansen PHOTOGRAPHY / Paul McCredie
Loretta 181 Cuba Street, Wellington 04 384 2213 loretta.net.nz
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 28
HOME Your
new space looks terrific. How did you go about designing your new restaurant in it? MARC WEIR, LORETTA CO-FOUNDER The space is fantastic, we love it! It seats 120 people but it has been soundproofed, so it’s comfortable to sit in when it’s full or empty. We worked very closely with Parsonson Architects, whose offices are upstairs. We took the space back to its original shell with a concrete ceiling and used the John Lautner house in the film A Single Man as a starting point. We wanted it to be relaxed, clean, simple, to relate well to Cuba Street and to be able to stand the test of time. The interior also had to relate to the food, which is delicious and flavoursome with a feeling of generosity about it. We use handmade tableware by Paul Melser, and the food looks fantastic on it. And we wanted the kitchen to be part of the dining room, and for the bar staff to work alongside the chefs, so we placed the kitchen on the right so everyone can see it. It adds a sense of theatre.
You still own Floriditas, just up the road – how does Loretta differ? Floriditas has been such a success, and [co-owners] Julie [Clark], James [Pedersen] and I wanted to create a larger, more casual space, somewhere appealing to a wider demographic and a place most people feel they could afford to stop in at any time of day. There have been a few interesting openings in Wellington recently. What’s causing this flurry of activity? It has being caused by a more casual approach to dining – my view is that people just want to eat good food, be served well with no palaver and not spend a fortune. We’ve tried to create something that’s accessible: herbs, proteins, pizzas, wood-fired sandwiches, simple wholefood eating just like you might cook at home.
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Right The hidden light source of the 'Surface' pendant provides an ambient glow. Below 'Shadow' mirrors are made from laser-cut, folded and powder-coated aluminium.
Far right The 'Pendant 45 Rose' can be formed from spun aluminium, copper or brass, and either polished or powder coated.
FRESH ANGLES
New Zealand designer David Moreland looks offshore with his new works. INTERVIEW / Jeremy Hansen PHOTOGRAPHY / Evie Mackay
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 30
HOME You’ve just shown your work at Milan Design Week and DesignEx in Sydney. How did that go? And how important is it for New Zealand designers to be able to access export markets? DAVID MORELAND I was lucky enough to be accepted into an exhibition titled The Other Hemisphere, which provided the opportunity to be part of two great trade fairs. I didn't get to Milan but did go to Sydney and it was really worthwhile. Being New Zealand-based means Australia is a really valuable market and I came back enthused and confident I can be successful there.
Tell us about the development of your latest releases, the ‘Shadow’ mirrors and ‘Surface’ pendants. The ‘Shadow’ mirrors were designed for the Sydney and Milan exhibitions and are constructed out of laser-cut, folded and powder-coated aluminium. The concept behind the product was to use symmetrical and asymmetrical geometric shapes and seamlessly
nest them into corners. The use of black punctuates a space, whereas white provides a subtler aesthetic. The ‘Surface’ pendants are made from CNC-cut timber and provide a hidden, ambient light source. They’re able to be hung from the ceiling or wall-mounted, with the idea that they are as visually strong even when they’re turned off. At this stage neither design is in full production, which is not normally how I operate, but it was really nice to work on some projects without such a commercial focus for a change. What else are you working on at the moment? I’m working through the release of a new 800mm x 800mm ‘Elevation’ table, as well as better price point options for this design. And I’ve just completed producing a ceiling rose for the ‘Pendant 45’ which it can house three lights and creates a waterfall-type chandelier. davidmorelanddesign.com
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Right Chris Penny (left), manages Hello Sunday Café in partnership with Jonathan Spark, who co-owns the café and Pascha, the wellness centre next door. Far right The fitout of the café's interior was an intuitive process, says Spark, with materials being salvaged as required from demolition yards and a church that collapsed in the earthquakes. Right Built in 1923 as a Baptist church, the building at left is now home to Pascha. Directly next door is Hello Sunday Café, a former post office that also did a stint as a Sunday school.
RESTORING FAITH
A pair of historic religious buildings in Christchurch have almost come full circle, providing solace of a different kind. INTERVIEW / Majka Kaiser PHOTOGRAPHY /
Guy Frederick
Hello Sunday Café and Pascha 6 Elgin Street, Sydenham, Christchurch Hello Sunday 03 260 1566 Pascha 03 374 2526 pascha.co.nz
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 32
HOME Can you tell us about the buildings’ origins? JONATHAN SPARK, HELLO SUNDAY CO-OWNER
The main building is home to Pascha, a wellness centre. It was a Baptist church, but in 1923 the Baptists sold it to the Seventh Day Adventists. During the mid-1900s a former 1870s post office was moved to the land beside the church and converted into a Sunday school, which is now home to Hello Sunday Café. How did the two businesses come to share the adjacent buildings? My wife and business partner Yasmeen Clark and I had been searching for a new premises for Pascha following the quakes. As part of the move we wanted to include a café to complement Pascha, so we asked Chris Penny to consider managing the café in partnership with us. We had an amazing team working on the two buildings, which also included Sam Stewart, Hello Sunday’s head chef, Dirk Heffter from Craftworx and our good friend, builder Kevin Withell. One of the highlights was
exposing the magnificent kauri trusses and inch-thick tongue-and-groove ceiling which had been hidden behind decades of dust and concrete. How did you decide on kitting out the café? It was an intuitive process; we simply listened to what the building needed. A lot of the materials have been salvaged from demolition yards, like the Victorian and early 20th-century ceramic tiles that line the plywood counter, and the pews which were rescued from Sam’s father’s church, which collapsed during the quakes. Modern elements like the naked bulbs above the tables lend a contemporary edge and complement the building’s heritage. What is your view on Christchurch’s recovery as a whole? The true recovery will happen because of the people, not because of government blueprints and plans. We wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what we have if we’d paid attention to council rules and regulations. We just got on with it.
Appraisal No.853 [2014]
D:08
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
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Our correspondent reports from the New York International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
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New York’s annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair is, at 600 exhibitors, not the world’s largest. But it’s still a dizzying experience attempting to parse the efforts of so many designers – particularly when one factors in the 12-day, city-wide NYCxDesign festival that takes place around it. With festivals like this, there is always an odd contrast between established brands with commercial clout and smaller outfits producing interesting work, for whom the goal might not be mass production. However, this year, it was nice to see some New Zealanders who fell into both categories. Uptown, David Trubridge showed again at Wanted Design in Hell’s Kitchen, and Jeremy Cole and Thing Industries were back at the ICFF in Chelsea. Downtown, the second annual INTRO/NY show provided a calm Nolita space, where Boskke and Simon James’ Resident brand featured alongside similar boutique international studios. At the ICFF itself, the genuinely interesting new designers seemed to be mostly scattered around the periphery in the smaller booths. Two major directions for these studios were towards producing craft- or artbased pieces (or even one-offs), or in exploring areas outside of established furniture archetypes – such as chair, lamp and table – to invent new products. These are some of the highlights of the fair.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 34
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1 Hinterland mong the craft-based designers A Hinterland’s 'functional art objects' were a striking antidote to homogeneity. Inspired by the crab pots of his local community in British Columbia, visual artist, designer and builder Riley McFerrin created a small table made of a brightly coloured, knotted, macramé-like weave stretched over a metal frame. The wilds surrounding his studio also provide both materials and muse for his pieces, most of which are one of a kind. The branches in his 'Scatter/Gather' pendant light, for example, are collected along the rugged Pacific shoreline, and the 'Nurselog' side-tables are fashioned from Western red cedar containing a round glass insert to grow moss and ferns on the useful surface – such as a stump in a rainforest.
hinterlanddesign.com
2 Grain thical designers Grain’s biggest-selling E piece, 'Ty', is a plain, white-plastic shower curtain that is also recyclable, durable and environmentally safe. They also collaborate with artisans in Guatemala to produce handwoven textiles with chunky, geometric shapes in gently muted hues. Their beeswax 'Totem' candles, carved on a lathe to resemble old-fashioned Monopoly counters, are clever, and their 'Dish' coffee tables are already classics.
graindesign.com
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3 Michael Robbins I t was very hard not to fall in love with Michael Robbins’ entire collection — not to mention the romantic fact that he designs and makes it all in a rustic old barn in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. Using time-honoured craft methods and materials, pieces such as the 'Taza Lounge' – with its detailed, but effortlessly beautiful joinery – look distinctly Modernist without being derivative. The gently tapered legs, a feature that pops up in many of Robbins’ wooden pieces, make it seem as if each is sitting lightly on the earth.
mchlrbbns.com
4 Ann Tilley onourable mention must also go to Ann H Tilley, the textile artist whose giant doily adorned the booth belonging to Skram, a sustainable furniture maker. With an obvious nod to the craft-based media of 1970s feminist art and more recent anti-capitalist protest art-craft of the third wave, 'Ain’t That Some Shit!' was a decorative cotton-crochet piece providing an amusing double-take – knit large, so to speak — on the bustling commerce surrounding it.
anntilleyhandmade.com
5 Wilson and Benn he designers who shook up the tradiT tional product archetypes were a similarly interesting bunch. The 'Tradesman’s Wedge' and related 'Gentleman’s Pocket Wedge' (for propping up wobbly tables and chairs) are produced by youthful designers Wilson and Benn, who are part of the UK’s Northumbria University Design incubator programme, Tools for Everyday Life. The wedge looks unassuming but represents, say the designers, a type of universal tool that is often overlooked or discarded after use. Producing them in tough, beautiful and everlasting materials such as brass, phosphor bronze and gunmetal gives the wedges a heft and presence that pays tribute to their ongoing value in our lives and, apparently, on our dates as well.
7 Scout Regalia he brand-new and very affordable 'SR T Foldable Table' from one of last year’s favourite studios, LA’s Scout Regalia, comes in a nicely edited range of happy camper colours – coral orange, pine green, mint green and charcoal. However, once the legs are folded and it’s hung up on the matching hook, the table’s magnetic, dry-erase surface means it can also be used as an ad-hoc whiteboard.
6 Thing Industries ew Zealander Bridie Picot, who coN founded Thing Industries with Matt Smith of Common Goods, released the Indoor Stoop, a stair-shaped wooden piece with built-in drawers on under-mount glides that close gently and silently in the manner of high-end furniture – but it’s also strong enough to use as a step-ladder. Or you can just hang out on the steps and shoot the breeze.
muuto.com
wilsonandbenn.co.uk
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8 Muuto uuto’s 'Unfold' pendant lamp takes what M looks like the classic and now ubiquitous industrial lightshade, and renders it in silicone rubber. As well as adding softness and tactility, the whole thing can be collapsed into itself with a gentle push on the top, allowing for tidy packing and distribution.
9 Vonnegut Kraft nd, finally, Vonnegut Kraft’s Relief A Mirror pulls double service as a reflective surface and a display alcove. In this boldly geometric piece, the stepped, orthogonal ash shelf is recessed into the mirror, framing a cut-out alternative view.
vonnegutkraft.com
thingindustries.com
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 35
HOME How
did you come up with the concept for this set? The ombré effect of gradually fading out from dark to light really interests me at the moment. I’m also drawn to stripes so I decided to combine them into a new-look twist on the two themes. I added the geometric angle to the room to anchor the floor to the wall and calm the uniformity of the stripes.
EMILY SOMERVILLE-RYAN, STYLIST
How did you choose the colours? The Karen Walker colours have always been favourites of mine and I wanted to create the gradient using her select range – starting with her darkest hue through to the lightest. Talk us through your furniture selection. I chose simple, graphic furniture with smooth lines, strong verticals and curves that contrast with the horizontal stripes on the wall. Pale, lighter pieces that jump out from the dark Resene Celestial Blue base hold their ground as the colours grow lighter up the wall. Karen Walker Paints for Resene are created in seven colour stories and 42 complex hues. Karen Walker colours are available exclusively from Resene ColorShops and selected Resene resellers nationwide. For more information, visit the ColorShop nearest you, or resene.co.nz.
Resene paint colours from bottom to top: Resene Celestial Blue, Resene Half Smalt Blue, Resene Robin Egg Blue, Resene Cooled Green, Resene Weathered Yellow and Resene Buttery White, all by Karen Walker Paints for Resene. Call 0800 RESENE (737 363) for your nearest Resene ColorShop,or visit resene.co.nz.
ADVERTISING PROMOTION / HOME + RESENE
From far left: ‘Downtown’ shelves by Oiva Toikka for Magis, $1,800 from Matisse, matisse.co.nz; ‘Strip’ chairs by Carlo Colombo for Poliform, $1,750 each from Studio Italia, studioitalia.co.nz; ‘Killigrew’ mat by Sophie Aschauer for Serpent Sea, $2800 from Simon James Design, store. simonjamesdesign.com; ‘Kimono’ stool by Goldsworthy, $494.50 from Cult, cultdesign. co.nz; ‘Comback’ chair by Patricia Urquiola for Kartell, $1,350 from Backhouse Interiors, backhousenz.com.
Resene colour challenge Karen Walker Paints for Resene are used in a surprising new way. / Emily Somerville-Ryan PHOTOGRAPHY / Melanie Jenkins STYLING
Resene Buttery White
Resene Weathered Yellow
Resene Cooled Green
Resene Robin’s Egg Blue
Resene Half Smalt Blue
Resene Celestial Blue
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 37
MADE TO MEASURE An ALTHERM® home responds to a tight brief
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An extensive homeowner brief that addressed specific requirements guided the design of this striking Upper Hutt home by architect Davor Mikulcic, of Studio MWA. Key criteria were requirements for a wheelchair-friendly interior and exterior, and the use of passive energy principles. A detailed 10-page brief was executed with a confidence and thoroughness that saw Davor and builder Brian Marriner of Maridale Construction win a number of architectural and Master Builder awards, the latter including best house in category for the Wellington region. The requirement for wheelchair access throughout all rooms and decks saw a single-level home designed despite the sloping hillside section. All the ALTHERM® Residential sliding doors were recessed at the sill to allow a flush floor level to the outside. “It was a unique and exciting project for me,” said Mikulcic, who approaches his commissions with architecture that he aims to be “functional, innovative, sustainable, brave and imaginative”.
ADVERTISING PROMOTION/HOME + ALTHERM WINDOW SYSTEMS
The home features four sloping roofs as independent elements, with a soaring, eye-catching corner over the main deck cantilevered more than three metres from the corner of the lounge. The lightweight roof structure is braced with steel, minimising the number of internal supporting walls, thus creating a spaciousness for wheelchair movement. Full-height glazing was favoured on the home’s northern elevation and meant that raking windows were needed to follow the eight-degree roof pitch. These rakers were overlights to ALTHERM® Residential sliding doors. Full-height glazing was also chosen on the western elevation to allow winter sun to penetrate the heat sink provided by the polished aggregate concrete floor and concrete block core of the building. Solar panels on the roof supplement electrical water heating for much of the year. All windows were double glazed, with a grey tint to provide a degree of sun screening. The powdercoat colour for the aluminium was Matt Black.
The exterior was clad in two materials – vertical Coloursteel and Titan board, with the latter using expressed joints as a negative detail. A wide variety of ALTHERM® products were used: sliding doors, bi-folding doors in two-panel and three-plus-one panel formats, awning windows and sashes on electric winding gear. Colourmatched hardware was used throughout. ALTHERM® manufacturers have a wide freedom to cater for a flush threshold when sliding doors are specified. The innovative flushline sill design has been rolled out to most mainstream and ‘upgrade’ sliding-door ranges. The feature offers minimal upstands to the outside and is available in ALTHERM® Residential, ALTHERM® Residential ThermalHEART®, Metro Series ThermalHEART® and APL® ARCHITECTURAL SERIES sliding doors. An integral part of the flushline sill system is new rollers, which allow smooth opening and closing. For more information, visit altherm.co.nz
Far left ALTHERM® Residential sliding doors are recessed to enable a seamless flow and wheelchair access to the extensive decking. As a dramatic feature, the soaring roof is pitched three metres from the corner of the lounge. Top All windows were double-glazed and given a grey tint for sun screening. Above With full-height glazing, the winter sun can penetrate the heat sink provided by the polished aggregate concrete floor and concrete block core of this attractive home.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 39
THE PERFECT RESULT
Introducing the next generation 60cm Built-in Oven, reinvented from the inside out with an extraordinary 77 litres of usable capacity and unique ActiveVent™ technology – an ingenious oven system that maintains heat and controls moisture levels for the
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PRESENTS
GLOBAL VILLAGES with Guest Editor
Karen Walker
— 44 — KAREN WALKER TALKS PONSONBY (AND HER PLACE) — 52 — MARKMAN ELLIS & REBECCA BEASLEY AT THE BARBICAN — 70 — DEREK HENDERSON IN BONDI — 82 — BERTRAND & KHALID AUDOIN IN GENEVA — 96 — TRACEY RYANS IN NEW YORK — 114 — KELMARNA GARDENS IN GREY LYNN — 126 — VALERY GHERMAN IN STUYVESANT TOWN — 141 — VIEW FROM MY WINDOW
KAREN WALKER
Photography / Mark Smith
Photography / Mark Smith
Guest Editor
Top This issue's guest editor, fashion designer Karen Walker. Above left and right Jenny Carlyon (left) and Diana Morrow discuss their book, Urban Village, at Karen's Ponsonby home. The photographs in the background are by Deborah Smith.
I went to Scotland last year to visit my brother, who lives in a place called Wigtown. Population: just under 1,000. We bickered, as only detail-obsessed siblings can do, over whether this made Wigtown technically a village rather than a town. I said it was surely a village; he said it was a town, having had that status formally bestowed upon it centuries ago by whoever it was that did those sorts of things then. In any case, life in Wigtown is as one would imagine life in any village: everything within walking distance; everyone knowing everyone else; a sense of security, history and place. It seemed to me, as we strolled around Wigtown Square, browsing in bookshops and shopping at the farmers’ market, that this life wasn’t unlike my own. Auckland is bigger than Wigtown but I live in a village-like way. Almost everything I want or need – groceries, cafés, work, school – is within five minutes’ walk of my home. In this issue of HOME we’ve taken the opportunity to examine how this age-old, village-oriented way of living now feels more modern than ever. Spacious garden suburbs are all very well in theory, but most people now know that they can also require a hellish commute. In an age when virtual connection is easy, it’s heartening that we still seem to crave the intimacy of community, of living closely side by side. Many of my friends choose to live this way, too, so in these pages we visit some of them in their urban villages in London, New York, Sydney and Geneva. In the spirit of connectedness, we asked other friends to share the views from their windows in a special photo essay – and we invite you to share views from your place on Instagram (use the hashtag #homekw). As well as looking at village living around the world, we’ve looked at what it was like in that other place – the past. I’ve thought a lot about the history of my own neighbourhood of Ponsonby of late, first thanks to a bundle of found letters and receipts that helped me tell the story of my own home (p.50), and second, thanks to the book Urban Village: The Story of Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary’s Bay, whose authors, Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow, discuss the notion of inner-city communities with me as part of this issue. My conversation with them reinforced what we suspected: that in times of constant change the ways we like to live have changed very little. Thanks so much to Jeremy for inviting me to work with him on this issue. He and his team have been amazing to work with and it’s been a wonderful experience for me. I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I enjoyed helping to create it. – Karen Walker
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 42
Left Shelly Beach from Point Erin Park, Auckland. Price, William Archer, 1866-1948, Collection of post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-001623-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records/22758291. This page Image courtesy of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1967.
Left Bathers enjoy high tide at Shelly Beach, which is seen from Point Erin Park (1914). The popular beach was obliterated when the motorway leading to the Auckland Harbour Bridge was built in the early 1950s. Below Artist Walter Wright's depiction of Shelly Beach, 1916.
IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD In an age crammed with technology, why do we still crave the human contact of living close to one another? TE X T ———
Karen Walker
The first thing I thought of when we began working on this issue of the magazine was Urban Village: The Story of Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary’s Bay, a book by Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow about the history of the neighbourhood I live in. My daily life in Auckland generally exists within a few blocks: my office is five minutes’ walk from my home, my daughter’s school is five minutes’ walk down the street and I buy all my groceries from the shops just a few seconds away on Ponsonby Road. I rarely use my car. I travel out of town a lot for my job and can communicate electronically with everyone I know, but I love that I’ve been able to minimise the hassle of commuting and other logistics when I’m home. I enjoy that we
can sit on our verandah and chat to the neighbours, and that the barista up the road knows my coffee order off by heart. I’ve realised that most of my friends – some of whom appear in this issue – prefer to live this way, too. We could choose to live in larger properties with big gardens further away from town, but the ability to walk to places and the sociability of living close to neighbours offers a different kind of freedom. To investigate why this is, I asked Jenny and Diana over to my place for lunch to talk about the fascinating history of the area, how gentrification has affected my neighbourhood, and the enduring appeal of urban villages. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
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What we've lost: A school sports day in the 1920s takes place at the Shelly Beach Baths, where eight lanes of motorway now lead to the North Shore. The docks and their smokestacks can be seen beyond the swimming spot.
This issue is about the way people like to live in villages, and when speaking to many of them for this issue, I found the same concept prevails whether it be in New York, London, Tokyo or Shanghai. It seems to be such a global trend now to downscale the physical size of where you live in favour of living in a better community. Does it answer some human need to have a village around you? KAREN WALKER
I suspect it does. A lot of it’s to do with moving back into the centre of cities – you think of England or America where they’re revitalising their city centres. In the 1940s and '50s everyone pushed out to the big suburbs but now there’s a move back to the cities again. JENNY CARLYON
Do you think that sense of life, of physical proximity to other people and the ability to walk to places and have chance encounters, is what people still like about this community, despite how much it has changed?
proximity of the homes does create a different social dynamic than in a place like Remuera, which we did a subsequent book on [A Fine Prospect: A History of Remuera, Meadowbank and St John’s, Random House, 2011]. We found there were bigger properties there and a different, more formalised sort of socialising. It was quite fascinating to discover how geographical space or even landscaping affects social community. I was really taken with the continuity in Ponsonby’s history. I’m always really interested in the tenacity of local character over time. In a community like this the demographic has changed but it is still linked to the Ponsonby that used to be – like how that traditional tolerance and support for the underdog is reflected in a modern context in the thriving gay community here in Ponsonby.
KAREN WALKER
This was a working-class community, so the fact that people walk a lot and the physical DIANA MORROW
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There has been so much physical change, too. In your book I was fascinated to read about and see the photos and paintings of Shelly Beach and the bays that were lost to the motorway leading to the Harbour Bridge. I felt so melancholy about that, because the photos are so romantic and it made me so sad that we lost that part of the coastline. KAREN WALKER
Low tide completely exposes the ramp at West End Rowing Club on Auckland's St Mary's Bay shoreline. In the 1950s, the motorway leading to the Auckland Harbour Bridge was built under the cliffs.
One of the men we interviewed for the book, Jack Leigh, said that before the motorway was built he used to spend hours and hours playing there when the tide was out on the sand, and they kept boats down there. But I guess things change. The shoreline of Freemans Bay once came right up to the bottom of College Hill Road, and Victoria Park was water.
Left Published with permission from the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Above Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W810.
JENNY CARLYON
You’re right – it didn’t all look romantic. In your book there is a photograph of the huge gasometer looming at the bottom of College Hill Road, and just five or six houses remaining in the area around it, which had otherwise all been cleared. There was something so sort of post-apocalyptic about that image that I really hadn’t associated with this neighbourhood before. KAREN WALKER
I hadn’t appreciated the degree to which Freemans Bay was a problematic area – it was the worst slum in the city, a real living slum. People didn’t like to think of New Zealand that way, and we sort of brought it to their attention.
remembered going to the Victoria Park destructor – where rubbish was burned and the incinerator heated water for free public showers – to have a shower once a week because that was the only place where you could have hot showers. They didn’t have indoor toilets, and they had one tap between five houses. He said after the Second World War they were given a new house which had a refrigerator, and they were so excited, and off they went to Orakei but they were so lonely – they were so used to their street community where everybody knew everybody intimately. The clearances of that era moved everybody out and people got nothing for their houses. The area was huge – it didn’t all get cleared luckily, but it wasn’t until the community objected that they had to stop. It has always been a strong community.
DIANA MORROW
JENNY CARLYON
A man we interviewed who lived there
So, what have we lost, if you look back at the history of the area? KAREN WALKER
I think it still has a sense of community, but maybe it’s not so strong. Because of the price of housing people are becoming much more JENNY CARLYON
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 46
individualistic and putting up much bigger fences, whereas previously they had little wee picket fences and just had a chat as they went by. So there’s probably less communication just passing the time of day between neighbours or people on the street. A lot of the people we had tried to interview obviously couldn’t afford to live here anymore, and particularly a lot of the Polynesian people had moved out, not because their houses had got so expensive that they thought they were getting a lot of money to sell them, but they couldn’t afford to keep paying rates. There was an amazing amount of community spirit here, and I think it still exists to a certain extent – you’ve got the Freemans Bay residents society, you’ve got a similar organisation in St Mary’s Bay, and they fight to keep the community as a community, much more so than Remuera, we found. I’m not quite sure whether we are on the edge of something now, where some of the values that we like to associate with this community in terms of tolerance and diversity [are changing]. Certainly the Labour Party tradition has eroded – last election, after decades and decades of this being a Labour Party area, it turned National.
If you were to create a village within an urban area from scratch, what elements do you think it would have to possess to be successful, to thrive and flourish? KAREN WALKER
It needs something like a town square where everybody goes to meet and buys everything and you need green space, too, obviously. And you need people close together. JENNY CARLYON
DIANA MORROW
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Urban Village: The Story of Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary’s Bay by Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow is published by Random House.
Left Franklin Rd, Ponsonby, Auckland. Creator of Collection Unknown: Photographs of Auckland and Lyttelton. Ref: 1/2-004185-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records/22791340. Right Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W213 and 580-1163.
The juvenile plane trees in this circa-1890 photo of Ponsonby's Franklin Road now tower over the street. The trees were boxed to prevent vandalism; some of the perpetrators were goats. Rangitoto looms across the harbour in the distance.
Above The gasometers (circa 1905) at the foot of College Hill and Franklin roads supplied gas to the city. Below Houses being cleared on Howe Street, Freemans Bay, to make way for a 1950s housing development near the Beresford Street gasometer.
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Above Ellen McGuire (middle row, third from left) with some of her 14 children at their home in Ponsonby in the early 1900s. Thanks to Fay Howlett for allowing us to reproduce the photo.
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ONE HOME’S STORY A single, much-changed Ponsonby home speaks volumes about the history of the village around it. TE X T ———
Karen Walker
The home I now live in was first owned, from 1893, by a Mrs Ellen McGuire. Her husband had taken off to Australia with the gold he’d prospected in the Coromandel, faked his own suicide and set up house with the second Mrs McGuire. Our Mrs McGuire had remained in Ponsonby, where she raised 14 children. A further three had died. It’s from this home that she saw one of her sons leave for the French battlefields. It’s here that a grandson was blinded in my backyard; a toy bow and arrow took one eye out and a subsequent infection finished off the other. It’s also in my backyard that Mrs McGuire had her bathhouse and coal bunker. It’s from my home that many of her brood went to the same primary school that my daughter now attends, while others headed off to be taught by the nuns at St Mary’s College. It’s in my dressing room that one of her sons died in the 1960s, the end of the McGuire line in this home. He was the local ironmonger; his shop is now the Ponsonby Subway. His name was Toby. He died on an iron cot, surrounded by piles of the New Zealand Herald which, for some unimaginable reason, he hoarded. I know all this because when we moved into the house there was a file of dozens of letters and receipts to Mrs McGuire in one of the kitchen drawers. I can only imagine they were discovered somewhere in the house during a previous owner’s renovation. The originals are now with her descendants, who came by one day and were happy to receive their matriarch’s mail. The papers gave a fascinating insight into her life. Over a series of letters from her son Gussie, many of them on paper ominously headed “Somewhere in France”, we learnt how he went through training in Featherston, how he didn’t receive the razor his brother Toby had sent him but he did get the nail scissors and could he please have some copies of the Auckland Star and, if she was sending cake, to please make it plum pudding. The letters told how, once he got to France, he was given plenty
of cigarettes but that he wanted his mother to send him lollies, biscuits, fruit and sardines. We held our breath as we read on until he got safely back to London but were alarmed when he caught influenza. He recovered. He liked the South Kensington Museum. He made it home safely in the end. Mrs McGuire’s daughters studied violin, French and painting. A school report from a Sister Mary shows that one of the girls received 95 percent for conduct, 90 percent for religious knowledge, 100 percent for needlework, 85 percent for deportment and 100 percent for politeness. Another got 71 out of 100 for performing ‘The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond’ at a music competition. The blinded grandson studied at the Jubilee Institute for the Blind in Parnell for £3.15s a term. In 1907 Mrs McGuire bought a Singer sewing machine. There were a great many receipts from Lion Breweries for stout. She bought bread every day. She bought her meat from the Surrey Butchery in Grey Lynn. She bought a very great deal of tea. She was always prompt with her insurance. She was often late with her rates. In 1918 the rateable value of the house was £32. In 1925 it was £38. A century and some later, this house is now the epitome of gentrified Ponsonby. On a summer’s day, while my family and I are splashing around in the pool, I often think of Mrs McGuire’s washhouse, bathhouse, coal bunker, chickens and vegetable garden being in the same spot once upon a not-so-very-long time ago. When getting changed in my dressing room, I sometimes imagine the creaking of Toby the ironmonger’s little bed. These are reminders for me and the rest of Ponsonby that no matter how many fancy light fittings, remote-controlled gates, Jo Malone candles and take-out lattes your house can accommodate, it’s not so long ago that your expensive villa was a rudimentary building in which other people battled through the challenges of their very different lives.
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 50
Formed from monolithic slabs of site-cast concrete, London's Barbican estate is a bold and unmistakeable example of Brutalism.
Bold, visionary and arresting, London’s fabulously Modernist Barbican development is a vertical urban village whose 1960s Utopian vision still holds true. TE X T ———
54 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
Maria Majsa
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Patrick Reynolds
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 55
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Previous page Inside Markman Ellis and Rebecca Beasley's Barbican apartment. Far left According to David Heathcote, author of Penthouse Over the City, The Barbican set out to provide a living space that was English, yet European in ambience, and American in its use of technology. Left Stack upon stack of pickhammered, crushed granite concrete helps form this Modernist experiment. Below Designed by a group of young Modernists and built over 20 years from the 1960s, the Barbican defined a new era in urban living for Londoners.
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Eight years ago, English professors Markman Ellis and Rebecca Beasley were living happily in a Victorian maisonette on a leafy North London street. So what prompted the seismic move to London’s landmark Barbican estate? “The love of concrete,” Ellis replies without hesitation. It should be added that the Barbican's central location, magnificent views and attention to design detail also figured strongly in their decision to swap suburban life for this Modernist urban Utopia. Built in the 1960s and 1970s on 14 hectares of the city that were razed by German bombers in 1940, the Barbican is a unique architectural endeavour. According to David Heathcote’s book Penthouse Over the City, the project was seen as an opportunity to create a new living environment for Londoners – “a living space that was English but also European in its ambience and American in its use of technology”. Its planners and architects were a group of young Modernists working on the post-war reconstruction in a spirit of great optimism. Chamberlin, Powell and Bon were fledgling architects who had only recently formed a partnership when their involvement with
A project of this scale and ambition was bound to have its detractors, but for Ellis and Beasley, the estate has been everything they expected and more. It is a leisurely 25-minute walk (or two Tube stops) to the British Library in King’s Cross where they both do research. Ellis, an ex-Aucklander who has lived in England since winning a scholarship to Cambridge and earning a PhD in 18th-century literature, has a morning commute to Queen Mary University of London of just 15 minutes door to door. The ease and convenience of inner-city living was something they had both anticipated when they moved to the Barbican, but Beasley says the romance and excitement of being in the centre of things has been a revelation. With its double aspect and further illumination from a glazed stairwell in the hall, their one-bedroom apartment is light, airy and feels surprisingly spacious. Beasley loves the way the flat is organised to occupy one level, unlike their previous house in which the kitchen and living spaces were on different floors. “I really enjoy how much it throws us together, living and working around each other when we are home, properly sharing the space.” The only minor downside,
“I really enjoy how much it throws us together, living and working around each other when we are home.” the Barbican began. Their clear idea of how to live the good life made the development unusual in post-war Britain in that, Heathcote says, “it is an essay on a certain definition of urban pleasure”. Intended as it was for City workers such as bank clerks who would appreciate the convenience of living near their place of work, every detail of this vertical urban village was designed with care and consideration. “From the tailor-made light switches to the high-spec door knobs – the interiors had the feel of an expensive car,” Heathcote writes. The inclusion of an arts centre, library, concert hall, theatres, cinemas and schools within the estate demonstrates the high-minded, aspirational and complete nature of the planners’ original vision. Decades on, the Barbican is well-known as a bold example of Brutalist architecture, its monolithic slabs of pick-hammered, crushed granite concrete asserting an unmistakeable presence. However they are not universally well-loved: the estate has long been a stalwart of UK ‘ugliest building’ polls and the London Evening Standard once compared it to “Mr Potato Head in Toy Story – its ear where its mouth should be, its arm in its eye socket, its nose upside down”.
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they agree, is that a bit more space would be welcome, especially when they have people to stay. Do they feel a responsibility to preserve the apartment in its original condition? “Yes, in a way,” says Ellis. “You’re allowed to renovate the interiors and many have, but ours was almost completely original and we wanted to respect that.” Maintaining a 40-year-old fitted kitchen that was experimental when it was installed can be a challenge, but Beasley points out “there is a lot of support from the estate to do so”. The Barbican Salvage Group was set up by residents and carefully dismantles, catalogues and keeps any original fittings removed during a renovation so they might be used in other flats. “Then if something breaks or wears out, you can visit the store and they do their best to find an exact replacement for free,” Beasley says. Living in the Barbican comes with a hefty service charge, but residents get a reasonable amount of amenity in return. Rubbish and recycling are collected daily and central heating is included, along with the servicing of various features such as the Garchey waste disposal and the ventilation system. If anything breaks down there is a maintenance crew with a vast
Above Despite its high density (housing around 4,000 residents), the design – which incorporates a multitude of staircases and lifts to feed residents into their apartments – minimises interaction with neighbours almost too much, says owner Markman Ellis. Below An Eames 'DSR Eiffel' chair is pulled up to the '606 Universal' shelving system by Dieter Rams for Vitsoe. ‘The Dancer’ (1949) by Henri Matisse is a lithograph from the 'School Prints' Series. On the shelving above are glass birds by Oiva Toikka for Iittala and mini canvases by John Reynolds. On the top shelf to the left is a 'Cylinda- Line' watering can by Arne Jacobsen for Stelton. A 'Bin Bin' waste basket by John Brauer for Essey sits on the floor beneath the drawers. On the other side of the room-dividing sliding doors, 'Q Stak' chairs (1953) by Robin Day for Loft sit at the dining table.
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The apartment has room enough to house a swathe of books arranged chromatically by the owners, who are both English professors. The books sit on a '606 Universal' shelving system by Dieter Rams. Kosta Boda 'Snowball' tea-light holders are lined up on the vintage dining table. Above hangs a 'PH5' pendant lamp by Poul Henningsen for Louis Poulsen. The vintage sideboard displays a 'PlayPlax' by Patrick Rylands and a 'CylindaLine' cocktail set by Arne Jacobsen for Stelton, which are illuminated by a Robert Welch 'Lumitron' lamp. In front is a Robin Day sofa for Habitat Forum.
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collective knowledge of the interiors and fittings at hand. Beasley says the repair process is usually seamless. “You let the estate office know what’s happening and they organise a key release, so one of the trusted maintenance workers can let themselves in and get on with it.” Housing around 4,000 residents, the estate is sometimes referred to as “Britain’s largest voluntary ghetto”. Ellis can think of few negatives, apart from the intriguing fact that despite the density of the development, its design minimises everyday interactions with neighbours almost too much. “The Barbican was designed like a college with flats off staircases rather than corridors, which means you are far less likely to keep bumping into your neighbours,” he says. Their apartment is served by a lift that is shared with only 18 other flats. On the plus side, the building’s concrete walls are so thick they virtually never hear noise from neighbours. They both enjoy the
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sense of community and reassurance of having people around without ever feeling hemmed in by a crowd. The idea that the estate was “designed to be experienced as a resident, to reflect their sense of self and to be convenient for them,” as Heathcote writes, rings true. There is an old-school honesty to the Barbican community, a feeling of appreciation for their environment and a sense of pride that goes with living in this bravely experimental Modernist development.
“You’re allowed to renovate the interiors and many have, but ours was almost completely original.”
Above A collection of vintage Danish (mostly Holmegaard) and German glass objects. On the top shelf is ‘Petri Dish’ by Klari Reis. Left The 40-year-old kitchen was experimental when it was installed and can be a challenge to maintain but there is a lot of support from The Barbican estate to retain its integrity. Far left Details such as tailormade switches give the interiors the feel of an expensive car.
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The Barbican Foodhall is the ground-floor restaurant of the Barbican Arts Centre. The interior was remodeled by SHH architects in 2011.
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Above Rebecca crosses the bedroom window, which has a view into the estate. An 'Elephant' stool (1954) by Sori Yanagi for Vitra sits in a corner of the room. Top right The vast foyer of the Barbican arts centre by night. Right The inclusion of an arts centre, library, concert hall, schools and cinemas within the estate asserted the planners' high-minded and aspirational intentions for what was to become a London icon.
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There is an old-school honesty to the Barbican community, a feeling of appreciation for their environment and a sense of pride that goes with living in this bravely experimental Modernist development.
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Rebecca sits on the 'Lamino' easy chair by Yngve Ekstrรถm for Swedese, next to 'Penguin Donkey II' by Ernest Race for Isokon Plus. To her right is an 'AJ' floor lamp by Arne Jacobsen for Louis Poulsen. A 'Cobra' lamp by Greta Grossman for Gubi sits on a 'Tulip' side table by Eero Saarinen.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK A fashion designer and an English professor discuss Modernist living.
KAREN WALKER I'm
a sucker for a bit of Brutalist concrete and have always loved the look of the Barbican. You must pinch yourself every day you live there. Can you imagine ever moving back into Victoriana? MARKMAN ELLIS I think it would be hard to move back to the classic Victorian conversion, as the scale and ambition of the Barbican is so inspiring. The flat is small, but it is a well-designed machine for living. That said, we wouldn't mind more space, and have always wanted to build our own house, perhaps in London, perhaps by the sea somewhere. But I think that's more likely to take its inspiration from the Barbican than a Victorian terrace. I love how the lines of the buildings have been softened by people's terrace gardens. Do you enjoy that contrast? I'd prefer it without any flowers: to my mind, the gardens should all be dark green vegetation. We've planted our window
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boxes with New Zealand flora (more or less): hebe, Muehlenbeckia, cordylines, there's even a kowhai. But I do love the shared gardens around the lakes, which are lovely for a quiet read in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening. Are all the people who live around you Modernist geeks or are some people oblivious to the Barbican's significance? Our flat has mostly original features, which means that the kitchen fittings in particular are starting to show their age: they are more than 40 years old. Lots of flats have now been renovated, and people do the most unsympathetic things to them: country pine kitchens, Tuscan tiled floors, ruched curtain swags, reproduction Georgian furniture. There certainly are plenty of Modernist geeks like us, but I don't think we are in the majority. The estate is in the City of London, the financial centre, so many residents are here for the convenience of the location.
2010
2011
IDEAS TO
REMEMBER CALL FOR ENTRIES A Memorial for the Canterbury Earthquakes He Whakamaharatanga mō Ngā Rū o Waitaha The Memorial will provide a space for people to reflect on the devastating events that forever changed Canterbury, paying respect to the 185 people whose lives were lost on 22 February 2011. It will acknowledge not only the shared trauma but also the huge support received with the recovery operation that followed. This is your opportunity to help create a unique and lasting tribute by submitting your own design ideas for the Memorial. Design ideas must be submitted by 22 August 2014, 12 noon.
CERA095/HOME/02
FOR MORE INFORMATION: ccdu.govt.nz/ideas-to-remember
The pool at Bondi Icebergs at the southern end of the beach is a Sydney icon.
Photographer Derek Henderson is often getting on and off planes. So when he's home in Sydney's Bondi, his favourite thing is to go nowhere at all. TE X T ———
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Jeremy Hansen
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Derek Henderson
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Previous page Sevenyear-old Lola at the family's Parker dining table. The work on the wall behind her is 'Round Midnight' by Ralph Hotere. The Moller bench in the corner is from Great Dane.
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This page A sideboard by Khai Liew occupies a wall in the living area. Above it is a work by Jake Walker. On one end of the side table sits a Rega 'PS1' turntable. To the right is a vintage string shelving system. The Danish leather and walnut occasional chair is a favourite spot for Louis the cat.
Derek Henderson works all over the world, but when he’s back in the Sydney village of Bondi he rarely ventures more than walking distance from home. In the past year he’s shot photographs for commercial clients in New York and Los Angeles numerous times, taken pictures in Kenya for the Karen Walker Eyewear campaign, done fashion shoots for magazines such as Vogue and Elle all over Australia, and recently completed a two-week assignment for department store David Jones’ summer campaign. This peripatetic globe-trotting undoubtedly has its glamorous side, but it makes Henderson crave a regular schedule. “I love routine because I spend most of my life on a plane with no routine,” he says. “My home is quite special because of my children and my partner and having routine with them is the most enjoyable thing for me. We usually go to the local café every morning I’m here, then I’ll drop Lola off at school and if I’m not working I’ll walk my son home from the café. In summer I’ll pick Lola up from school and we’ll go down to the beach. We do that for about eight months a year because the climate’s so amazing and the water is warm. I have an office at home and I enjoy working from there. We hardly ever go out of Bondi.” Henderson grew up in New Zealand on his parents’ orchard near Hastings, and moved to Auckland at the age of 19 to work as a cadet at the National
"Being a photographer, some years can be good and others not so good. I just keep it pretty simple and modest if I can." Bank. He discovered a passion for photography almost accidentally after buying a camera to record a holiday in Tahiti. “I ended up spending a lot of time taking photographs and showed them to a photographer who came into the bank,” he remembers. He left the bank after only nine months to work as an assistant for advertising photographer John Daley in Auckland before moving to Sydney for the first time in 1985. He stayed there for a year before moving to France to work as a stills photographer, and then to London, where he admits he was having too much fun to seriously focus on his career.
Henderson returned to Sydney in 2006 and started shooting for fashion magazines soon afterwards. He has remained in the city since then, he says, because it “has enough of the open natural environment and enough work to sustain me as a fashion photographer”. As well as his numerous commercial shoots, he has forged a parallel artistic career, creating regular exhibitions of his work and a series of beautiful photography books. He’s currently working on a short film about a yeti that he plans to return to New Zealand to direct at Paradise, near Glenorchy, in March 2015. Home for Henderson is a modest three-bedroom, 100 square metre apartment in a small 1960s block just up the hill from the beach. He lives there with his partner Kate Austin, a photographic agent, and children Lola, who’s seven, and Theodore, who’s almost a year old. Although he wouldn’t mind a bit more space, living relatively small is a deliberate choice. “The thing about Sydney is it’s a very expensive city to live in and property prices are ludicrous, so from a practical sense I don’t want to have a big mortgage,” he says. “Being a photographer, some years can be good and others not so good. I’m quite frugal – I just keep it pretty simple and modest if I can.” The apartment looks out onto a bowling green and a park – “quite a nice view,” Henderson says – and although he would like the chance to have a garden, he says the balcony provides just enough outdoor space. If they really need a break (which happens rarely, according to Henderson) Kate’s parents have a house in Clareville, about an hour’s drive north of Bondi. Bondi has changed in the years since Henderson first lived there in the mid-1990s, morphing from a raffish, surf-obsessed backwater to a place billionaire James Packer now calls home. (Henderson jokingly laments that he wasn’t there to photograph Packer’s recent fist fight outside his Bondi penthouse – the photographer who did so was apparently paid handsomely for his pictures.) “Back then it wasn’t considered a neighbourhood that wealthy people would want to live in,” he says. “But now it has become popular with merchant bankers. It is what it is.” In any case, something of Bondi’s essential village-like character is ingrained enough to have weathered both gentrification and a continuous flood of tourists. Henderson doesn’t seem to mind either of these minor downsides, and certainly has no plans to move. “The locals go where the locals go and the tourists go where the tourists go,” he says. “You can still have a local life, but I don’t mind the cosmopolitan thing. It makes me feel like I’m part of what’s going on in the world.”
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"I don't mind the cosmopolitan thing. It makes me feel like I'm part of what's going on in the world."
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Above Kate and Theodore have a prime spot at Bondi Icebergs cafe, from where dolphins are regularly seen frolicking nearby and whales surface in the distance. Left The greens of Bondi Bowling Club or 'bowlo' can be seen from Derek and Kate's apartment. Far left Pania lamps sit either side of the Modernica bed. The hide on the floor is from Great Dane. The image above the bed was taken near Bluff by Henderson and is published in his book The Terrible Boredom of Paradise.
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The leather sofa is from Great Dane and the velvet sofa is vintage, both with cushions from Spence & Lyda. The coffee table is by Khai Liew. On the back wall hangs a photograph of Sid Vicious, taken by Dennis Morris in the late '70s. At left is a piece by Martin Poppelwell from 2009. On the opposite wall, the artwork is a photograph taken by Anton Maurer at Otira Highway, Arthur’s Pass.
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Photographer Derek Henderson in a rare moment in front of the camera.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK A well-travelled New Zealander now calls Bondi home.
KAREN WALKER Bondi – nothing quite compares to it, right? We've hung out in Bondi together often and there's something about the smell of frangipani in the air and the blueness of the horizon that always puts me in a holiday mood. What is it that has kept you living in Bondi for so many years? DEREK HENDERSON For me, Bondi has everything. I live near the beach, can swim in the morning, have breakfast at any number of great cafés, drop my daughter Lola off to school – which is across the road from the beach – and still get to work on time. There are not many places in the world where you can do that.
I know that Lola's becoming quite the pro in the surf. For someone who doesn't trust big waves or large animals that live in the sea, I find that slightly terrifying. The kids at Bondi
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seem to be completely fearless, though. How long will it be until she's out-surfing you? She can pretty much surf better than I can now. I’m not much of a surfer really. It's just a great thing to be able to take the kids to the beach and into the pristine water and dive under the waves. I feel like I’m in a Terrence Malick film sometimes – it is really that uplifting. Is there anywhere else you'd like to live or will you eventually be one of those 80-year-olds hanging out at the Icebergs? Sydney is home for me now and, to be honest, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I’ve spent most of my life moving around, living in different cities because of the type of work I do. It's a restless way of living sometimes so, yes, hopefully I’ll be one of those grumpy old men in my swimmers hanging at the beach with a great suntan and telling the kids to keep it down!
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A view from the top floor of Bertrand and Khalid Audoin's duplex in an 18thcentury building in Rues Basses, Geneva's small but famous shopping district.
Bertrand and Khalid in the living room with their chihuahuas, CC and Eole. Bertrand sits on a sofa by Swedish designer Ole Wanschen. Behind him, a framed 19th-century Tibetan tangka rests against the wall, and a steel sculpture of flowers stands nearby. The 'Bali Cruise Liner' cushions at left are by Billy Allen.
Swapping Paris for Geneva caused concern among friends who thought they'd find it dull, but this couple has found the good life in the small, serene Swiss city. TE X T ———
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Jeremy Hansen
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Nicole Bachmann
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Left The collection of art includes the framed orange and pink 'Love' by Yves Saint Laurent (2001), a lithograph by French artist Bernard Buffet (1963), and an ink-on-paper 'Profile of a Young Man' by Swiss artist Hans Erni. Below On the wall above the 19th-century French writing desk is a composition of lithographs by Victor Vasarely. The dining table and chairs are by Cinna. Right Just a stroll away from the apartment is Lake Geneva with Jet d'Eau, the fountain that has been a fixture of the lake since 1886.
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"People said leaving Paris for Geneva meant we would be losing our quality of life, but it is so much better here."
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Bertrand and Khalid spend hours scouring specialist book stores in the neighbourhood, such as Librairie Ancienne Antiquites, and further afield.
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The Swiss city of Geneva is small – it has a population of fewer than 300,000 – but it is a global village of a high-end kind: around 40 percent of its residents are foreigners, many of them working in banking, finance or at the United Nations or one of the many other international organisations that cluster around it. Bertrand and Khalid Audoin are two such residents. Bertrand is French, Khalid is Moroccan. They met in Paris and moved to Geneva three years ago. Some friends suggested they were mad. “People were telling us we would find it boring,” Khalid says, “but we’re not people who go to bars every day. We love Geneva. It’s so serene. Every five minutes there’s a park – it’s very green and it’s not polluted. And it’s very Swiss: everything works perfectly.” They live in a duplex on the fifth and sixth floors of an 18th-century building in the heart of the city, known as the Rues Basses, a tiny shopping area between the hills and the lake. Bertrand has two jobs: he works as the vice-president of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, a group that organises training and care provision for people with HIV/AIDS around the world; his other gig is the director of sponsorship for EDHEC, a French business school. (These two part-time jobs, he says, feel more like two full-time ones.) Khalid, who completed a PhD in political science in Paris, works at the Geneva office of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, an organisation that takes the position that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has failed and advocates for progressive policy reform. The couple’s descriptions of their occupations and the city’s geographic beauty make Geneva seem slightly surreal: a pristine, moneyed alpine town in which highly educated people toil earnestly towards the lofty goal of making the world a better place. Doing good isn’t a new thing for the couple. Bertrand lived in Auckland from 1993 to 1996, working as the director of the Alliance Française (which is when he made the acquaintance of our guest editor). During that time he volunteered for local HIVprevention organisations, which led, on his return to Paris, to a 15-year stint as the general director of Sidaction, a French HIV/AIDS non-governmental organisation that funds scientific research and develops HIV prevention and treatment programmes around the world. After finishing his PhD and subsequent internships in New York and Bonn, Khalid worked in Paris as a communications officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The couple moved in together in Paris in 2009, and married just a few months ago. Their weekday routine in Geneva usually begins by walking their two Chihuahuas, CC and Eole, in the Jardin Anglais, a lakeside park just a couple of
minutes’ walk from their apartment. During weekends they’ll often take a longer excursion such as a two-hour round-trip walk to the Parc la Grange on the other side of the lake, a stroll that usually involves a visit to a favourite café. The couple are enthusiastic collectors of rare books, and often spend hours browsing a specialist rare-books boutique nearby. On other weekends they might take a drive to the Swiss capital of Bern, less than two hours away, or to Aix-les-Bains, an alpine town across the French border. If they’re staying in town, they say Geneva has a rich cultural life of concerts and exhibitions, almost all of them within walking distance of their apartment. Both London and Brussels are only an hour-and-a-half flight away, and they return to Paris – a three-hour trip by train – for one weekend a month to catch up with friends there. Even so, they feel no hankering to live in the French capital again. “Living in Paris was not really our thing,” Bertrand says. “We found the place a bit too hectic and too big for us. When we left Paris people said leaving the city for Geneva meant we would be losing our quality of life, but it is so much better here.”
"We love Geneva. Every five minutes there's a park – it's very green and it's not polluted. And it's very Swiss: everything works perfectly." They are also able to judge the city on how content it has made their pets: Bertrand and Khalid say their little dogs are more happy in Geneva than they have ever been. In Paris, the nearest decent-sized park was a long walk away and, instead, the dogs had to make do with the less pleasurable experience of being walked in a small green area in the middle of a road. “They love it in Geneva,” says Khalid. “Their lives have been so different since they moved here because they can go to the park every day.” Adds Bertrand: “Sometimes in Paris we would look at them and think they looked depressed and here they don’t. They do like it a lot more. It’s a much better place for people who have animals.”
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Right Edward Steichen's 'Versailles by Night' (1962) hangs on the bedroom wall. Below Lining the square at nearby Place Longemalle are hotels, galleries, cafĂŠs and boutiques. Far right Mont Blanc Bridge, a popular meeting point, crosses Lake Geneva.
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Left A photograph by Douglas Gordon casts its eye over the dining room. The black ceramic 'Phantom' on the chest of drawers is by architect Odile Decq. Next to it is a bronze and marble cup from the era of Napoleon III. The red lamp is by Cinna. At its base is a red-brown ceramic stool from the Paris home of Yves Saint Laurent. On it is an 18th-century Zlafa bowl from the Anti-Atlas area of Morocco. Far left A utility area at the apartment building.
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Bertrand takes in the view from the terrace of his apartment.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK Bertrand Audoin on the art of living in Geneva.
KAREN WALKER I've
not yet visited with you in Geneva but it looks completely idyllic. When I do finally get there what are a couple of mustsee things you'll show me? BERTRAND AUDOIN The local and not-so-well-known vineyards – there are many small biodynamic producers around here who make very good, well-priced wines. We'd also recommend the Bains des Paquis. Paquis is one of the neighbourhoods near the lake, and the bains, or baths, are like a jetty on the lake in this neighbourhood. It's more than 100 years old and extremely popular, with bars, restaurants, sauna and natural swimming pools in the lake. It gets very crowded in summer but we love it! You have a very compact life now, compared to when you were in Paris. What's the best thing about having everything within minutes of home? We were done with endless amounts of time spent in subways and buses, and we see that
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as a huge improvement in our quality of life. We get to spend time where we want to spend it, rather than having to deal with traffic jams. You have some lovely pieces of art. Are there any Swiss artists you've fallen for since moving to Geneva? Swiss artists, or artists who've lived in Switzerland – Jean Tinguely is one, as was his wife Niki de Saint Phalle, known for her giant 'Nanas'. Thomas Hirschhorn and Pipilotti Rist are among the contemporary Swiss artists we like, as well as Hans Erni – a bit of a local Cocteau, still alive and painting at 105. As far as writers go, we love Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz and Charles-Albert Cingria among the 20thcentury Swiss giants, and we love Martin Suter among the young ones. He writes amazingly disturbing novels set in current Swiss society but which speak to anyone living in an industrialised country. And don't forget the Dada movement was created in Zurich and the Cabaret Voltaire is still there.
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Tracey Ryans surveys the Edwardian barn that spreads over an area of more than 2,000 square metres at Grasmere Farm in upstate New York. The barn will eventually become the focal point of a retreat Ryans is working on with several partners.
With a whirlwind life of business ventures in Manhattan and beyond, no wonder Tracey Ryans likes to take time to “geek out on nature” in upstate New York. No surprise, either, that he’s already inviting people to go with him. TE X T ———
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Sam Eichblatt
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Emily Andrews
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Previous page Ryans outside the brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife Cecile Barendsma, a literary agent. Top left Grasmere Farm, just outside the historic township of Rhinebeck, encompasses more than 250 hectares of pasture, forests and rivers, as well as a manor house, this hangar-sized stone barn and a collection of Modernist dwellings. This is where Ryans comes to "geek out on nature" and where he is developing a retreat that will be similar in membership to NeueHouse, his "private workspace collective" in Manhattan. Left Ryans' brownstone neighbourhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Right Within Grasmere Farm is a loosely connected compound of Modernist buildings created for the Mensch family, who own the property, and are longtime friends of Ryans. Architect and artist Steve Mensch designed the pool house. Nearby, Ryans has a smaller, Zen-accented chalet.
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My day with Tracey Ryans begins with an early-morning text saying: “Bring waterproof shoes. It will be muddy”. The first stop on our itinerary, the NeueHouse office in Midtown Manhattan, however, is anything but pastoral. Instead, its rolling landscape covers five floors and 4,645 square metres of prime Manhattan real estate, done out in an industrial-meets-1950s-private-club style by David Rockwell, New York’s über-architect and the man behind the award-winning Grand Central Station renovation. Inside, staffers from Surface magazine, Island Records and the Frieze Art Fair rub shoulders with small firms and “solopreneurs” working on everything from running apps to organic-food delivery enterprises. There are many co-working spaces in this startupsmitten city, but NeueHouse bills itself as a “private workspace collective”. Its difference lies in the mixture of members who are vetted by a board beforehand; the name was inspired by the Bauhaus, and the idea of a group of people from different disciplines coming to one building and creating a movement. And they’re quite likely one of the friendliest, approachably cool and impeccably dressed group of people this side of the Hudson. Ryans is a consultant who specialises in putting the right people together to facilitate the classic New York symbiosis of art and commerce. Whether he’s introducing his accountant to a solopreneur navigating her first year in business, or luxury brands to art museums, or working as the executive producer for Frieze to bring together all the relationships the art fair needed to set up its New York chapter, he is constantly connecting people. Or, if you use the theme of this issue, he’s constantly building his own villages of connections. It was when Ryans lived in New Zealand for a year that he developed his friendship with our guest editor, Karen Walker. Originally a restaurant and hotel entrepreneur – Ryans co-owns the iconic La Esquina in SoHo and its Brooklyn outposts, Jamaican-style diner Miss Lily’s and The Box nightclub, and recently invested in a green-tea farm in Japan – he is in the process of setting up a members-only retreat in upstate New York, the next stop on our itinerary. There are also plans to open NeueHouse in Los Angeles, London, Milan, Zurich, Miami and Shanghai. When this man describes his Rolodex as “quite expansive”, it is probably the understatement of the year. It’s his connections that the partner and co-founder of NeueHouse puts at the organisation’s disposal. “I had all these different relationships that complemented what they were doing,” he says. “Anyone can build a pretty building and have nice furniture, but my job here primarily is the culture. I’m the minister of foreign affairs.” At NeueHouse, it’s a case of putting the right
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people in the right place. Small businesses are, here more than anywhere, subject to the most harshly Darwinian of laws, so it’s apt that Ryans compares the space to a biosphere or ecosystem. “We do it the way New York City happens,” he says. “If there’s a monoculture of cool fashion people, one disease, and they’re all dead. We also didn’t want it to be a tech tenement with a bunch of kids playing hackey sack and sleeping on couches. If it’s all tech companies and there’s a tech bubble, our company is going out of business. We wanted the diversity that would keep it healthy and interesting.”
"Anyone can build a pretty building and have nice furniture, but my job here primarily is the culture."
Another sign of its forward-thinking business ideals is that women run 50 percent of NeueHouse’s resident companies, a deliberate move on Ryans’ part. They include Cathie Black (ex-president and chair of Hearst Magazines), former AOL marketing chief Jolie Hunt, and Alexandra Kerry (daughter of US Secretary of State John Kerry), who runs film company Locomotive. Or as Ryans puts it: “We have some very strong, beautiful, bad-ass women here.” Some 160 kilometres upstate, a different-butsimilar community is taking shape just outside Rhinebeck, a historic small town on the banks of the Hudson River. This is, finally, where the mud comes in. Grasmere Farm is a sharp contrast to downtown Manhattan and Ryans’ brownstone in Brooklyn’s Park Slope. Owned by the family of Ryans’ college friend Jon Mensch, the heart of the 252-hectare estate of open pastures, forest and rivers is a 19th-century manor house and a soaring 17th-century stone barn with the dimensions of an aircraft hangar. Around the corner (or across some fallow fields, if you’ve remembered the waterproof footwear), there’s a loosely connected family compound of Modernist buildings where Ryans comes to “geek out on nature” and develop his practice of Soto Zen Buddhism, a spiritual model that focuses on living mindfully and in the moment – and which, no doubt, helps him remain affable and centred in his crazy whirl of social and business interests.
These two compounds, too, are based around the idea of social connection. Jon’s father, architect and artist Steve Mensch, was responsible for the elegant, back-to-nature design of the pool house, a communal lounge with glass doors that can be opened up or shuttered depending on the weather. He also designed the smaller, Zen-accented chalet that Ryans stays in nearby. Fifteen minutes' walk away via a forest and a suspension bridge are other houses designed by Steve Mensch for his children, including the Waterfall House, a stunning four-storey tour de force built onto the edge of a dam across the Landsman Kill (“kill” is old Dutch for “river”). Over the next year, the manor house (currently rented out, which is why its interior isn’t shown in our photographs)
and barn at Grasmere Farm will become the foundation stone of a retreat that will, in the same spirit as NeueHouse, welcome members to minimalist prefab villas and “glamping” options at various price points. The barn – which last hosted Chelsea Clinton’s wedding rehearsal – will be the communal centrepiece around which life will revolve. “The common thread in all of this is that it involves nice, smart people,” says Ryans. “I’ve known most of the people at NeueHouse for more than 10 years, and everything I do – from personal relationships to my networks – comes from a place of authentic appreciation for the beauty of simplicity and sincere relationships with people. It’s my ability to not accept anything less that has made it that.”
Wooden walkways and a suspension bridge lead through a forest on the expansive Grasmere Farm.
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Above Ryans at home in Brooklyn where he works on a mahogany table that was a gift from Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Top left The manor house at Grasmere Farm was built in 1774 by General Richard Montgomery and his wife Janet Livingston. Currently rented out, it will eventually become an integral part of the retreat. Left Waterfall House, designed by Steve Mensch for members of his family, is a modernist pavilion built at the edge of a dam.
"Everything I do comes from a place of authentic appreciation for the beauty of simplicity and sincere relationships with people."
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Left The gallery floor at NeueHouse was once an auction house and includes its original terracotta-tile walls. The artwork is of Ryans' favourite athlete, the Brazilian mixed martial artist Anderson Silva. A photograph of Franz Kafka is on the end wall.
Below The top floor of the fourstorey waterfall house in Rhinebeck gives the impression of a ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn. Ryokan-style sliding doors lead to a terrace overlooking Landsman Kill waterfall.
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A series of wooden walkways connect the villas at Grasmere Farm. "The common thread of all this is that it involves nice, smart people," Ryans says of the development of the farm and his other ventures.
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Right Ryans' goddaughter Libby Mensch plays with her nephew in the pool at Grasmere Farm. Far right As well as a leafy outlook, this bedroom takes in a view of the pool house. Below The artwork above the fireplace in Ryans' Brooklyn bedroom is by Cecile Chong.
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The self-described "minister of foreign affairs" for his well-connected community of talent is building another community in this rural idyll.
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Ryans and his goddaughters Claire and Libby take an afternoon walk along one of the suspension bridges over Landsman Kill, which leads to Waterfall House.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK Tracey Ryans splits his precious time between several villages.
KAREN WALKER Your new project looks like heaven. What drew you to Rhinebeck? TRACEY RYANS I met Jon Mensch when I was about 20. We became fast friends. He bought the property years ago and asked me to help him develop it into what will be Grasmere Farm.
companies starting consulting firms and taking the time to advise younger startups through true altruism. Watching 200 members cheering for the US during the World Cup in our theatre. Witnessing the inventor of the steel drum host a talk with a string theorist to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wu Tang Clan.
You always seem to know everyone in the room. Are you sure your Rhinebeck venture's not going to be a cult with you as the charismatic leader? I wish for it to be a melting pot of kind people: a mirror image of the Utopian NY I live in.
Park Slope's your other village. You once described yourself as Dr Huxtable, in your brownstone, sans the wacky sweaters. What's the best thing about living in a Park Slope brownstone? Brownstones have a likeness to the Kasbah: unified exteriors, phantasmagorical interiors with winding stairways and beautiful views of the Manhattan skyline. Strolling up our tree-canopied street with my wife Cecile to Prospect Park. The history of my heroes living in our part of Brooklyn ranging from Walt Whitman to Ol' Dirty Bastard. I almost opened a coffee shop called Ol' Dirty Whitman!
I love the concept of NeueHouse. By creating a space for like-minded people you've almost built a tiny village on East 25th Street. What have you enjoyed most about seeing it come together? Seeing solopreneurs collaborating in authentic organic fashion, former CEOs of Fortune 100
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Kelmarna Gardens is a green oasis in the inner-city Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn.
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Left Permaculture need not be high-tech: plastic bottles make perfectly functional cloches.
A green space in one of the city's most expensive areas shows how gardening can do good. TE X T ———
Katie Lockhart
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Darryl Ward
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Right Gardeners are each allocated a plot in which they can grow their own vegetables and herbs.
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Above As in all gardens, bees are a vital part of the equation in the Kelmarna Gardens orchard. Above right The gardeners feel a strong sense of ownership about their individual plots. Right Each gardener has his or her own set of tools.
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Right in the middle of one of Auckland’s most densely populated and expensive areas is a prime piece of real estate where people focus not on property values, but community values. As you drive down Kelmarna Avenue towards Grey Lynn and away from Jervois Road, the landscape of villas and bungalows suddenly gives way to open space. This is Kelmarna Gardens, a community operation since the 1980s that provides a home for bees, chickens and a Welsh Timor pony named Jafa, as well as lovingly tended vegetable plots and an orchard. Kelmarna Gardens is a certified organic garden that runs on the principles of permaculture. It was established in the early 1980s by Paul Lagestedt, a young organic gardener who approached the city council wanting to establish an inner-city community garden, and was granted a lease on 1.7 hectares of land that had previously belonged to the Catholic Church. He and a group of workers utilised biodynamic French intensive practices to transform backyards into paddocks, implementing features such as double-dug soils and living kikuyu sod walls. The gardens are still flourishing today in a way that makes you think that every urban village should have one. The gardens are currently operated by Framework, a community mental-health service provider that uses gardening here as a way to assist people with mental illness make their way back into the workforce. “The intention has been to provide a resource for people who have experienced mental illness to learn about organic gardening practices, with a view to equipping them with skills that may lead on to employment, perhaps in horticulture,” says Helen Robertshaw, Framework’s general manager of vocational services. Framework’s 20 or so clients are each allocated plots in which they can grow their own vegetables and herbs with guidance from a team of supervisors. We expect it to be a fallow period in late July when HOME visits, but the vegetable beds are full of kale, garlic shoots, leeks and other winter bounty. A large blackboard lists suitable crops to plant at this
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time of the season, as well as information on whether they should be direct-sown or grown as seedlings in the glasshouse. Each day the team share communal lunches made from the daily harvest. Fruit is available from the orchard almost nine months of the year. The gardens perform another important role: growing a multitude of heirloom and native species, an antidote to garden-centre streamlining of varieties. Indeed, the gardens are a remarkably gentle and successful way of spreading the word about their many benefits. A self-directed nature trail is open to the public, allowing kids and their parents to wander in the weekends, to see the animals and the bees and to watch organic cultivation in action. “In many cases, mostly with children, it is their first exposure to linking where their food comes from, such as collecting the eggs from the chickens,” Robertshaw says.
The gardens perform another important role: growing a multitude of heirloom and native species, an antidote to gardencentre streamlining. The gardens welcome visits from school and community groups, a function that makes this relatively small plot of land take on an outsize importance, spreading the word about the benefits of organic gardening practices, growing your own food and knowing where it came from. Robertshaw says she senses a growing awareness of the importance of sustainability and organic gardening, as a way for households to save on their grocery bills and to feel more connected to the food that they eat and the land that produces it for them. She also notes that the gardens are a place where different generations connect in a way they might not elsewhere. Kelmarna Gardens is a model of urban food production that others are encouraged to emulate, whether it be in their own backyards or in shared community spaces. “Given the emphasis on sustainability and awareness of good environmental practices at the gardens,” Robertshaw says, “people can and do become more conscious and may take up other community activities that also embrace this.”
This page A view towards the garden's lunch room, where meals using the gardens' produce are served to the workers every day. Opposite Hand-painted signs are used throughout the vegetable plots.
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Below The chickens welcome visitors, but their diet remains well-controlled.
Right Many varieties are grown from seeds in the gardens' glasshouses. Below right Calves laze in Kelmarna Gardens' pastures.
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Valentina Gherman, a regular visitor to Auckland's Kelmarna Gardens, says hi to the chickens.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK A mother-daughter conversation about a favourite destination.
KAREN WALKER So, my darling girl, you’re a big fan of Kelmarna Gardens and you’ve been a regular visitor since you were a baby in a pram. I know you love the animals especially. Who’s your favourite? VALENTINA GHERMAN (KAREN'S DAUGHTER) My favourite animal is Jafa [the horse] because he lets me pat him and his fur on his nose is so soft. He always runs up to the gate when he hears my voice. One day I was so lucky, I got to have a ride on his back! I liked it when the farmer showed me his poos. They’re good for the garden.
What about the chickens? You enjoy visiting them too don’t you? My favourite chook is the white chook because I don’t usually see white chooks. One day they gave me an egg and I held a chook. I like it when they escape from their cage because I get to sneakily pat them.
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Are there any other animals you like to visit? I like the bees because they’re friends with our pet bees at home. Behind them is the paddock with the calves. Once they came running up to the fence and Helen took a close-up photo! So you love the animals but Kelmarna Gardens is also famous for its produce. Do you like to look at the actual planting when you're there? My favourite thing about the fruit and veges is that sometimes they let me eat some. I’ve tried their carrots, beans, guavas, grapes and figs. Once I got to water the veges which was fun because I got to hold the hose. Is there anything else that you like about Kelmarna Gardens that you can think of? I like to hold hands with scarecrow because he’s got a funny face.
READER EVENT
Small is beautiful Small homes are the future. Celebrate Auckland Architecture Week by hearing Nat Cheshire and Andrew Simpson talk about the joys and benefits of designing small with HOME editor Jeremy Hansen. Saturday September 27, 2pm – 3pm, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki Auditorium (use main entrance on Kitchener Street), Auckland.
Photography / Darryl Ward, Paul McCredie
Nat Cheshire Cheshire Architects Winner, Home of the Year 2014
Free entry. Seating on a first-come, first-served basis.
Andrew Simpson Wiredog Architecture Finalist, Home of the Year 2014
New York-based makeup artist Valery Gherman stands a block east of his Stuyvesant Town apartment, at the bike track that runs along the Franklin D. Roosevelt (or FDR) East River Drive.
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New York’s Stuyvesant Town, a cluster of towers housing more than 11,000 standardised apartments, crash-lands leafy suburban values in one of the city’s coolest districts. TE X T ———
Sam Eichblatt
PHOTOGR APHY ———
Emily Andrews
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Previous page Gherman sits on one of several chairs given to him when a friend moved into an apartment that had limited space. The table is from CB2. Above it, a Seth Fluker print picks up light from the window. Above At a viewpoint on the East River, Gherman points north towards the United Nations headquarters. Left From a walkway over FDR Drive, along the East River of Manhattan, Gherman looks south in the direction of Peter Cooper Village. Far left The 56 apartment towers are well spaced over a cross-shaped plan to maximise light and ventilation.
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The developers of Stuyvesant Town would no doubt be delighted with the scene that greets visitors on a sunny weekend. Inside its central green space, the Oval, a small farmers' market is in full swing, with chocolate-box pretty arrangements of organic fruit and vegetables. Children play around the fountain while their parents spread out picnic blankets in the stippled light beneath mature trees. Neighbours chat, birds tweet and self-important renta-cops circulate on Segways. Welcome to one of New York City’s most successful (and controversial) post-WWII private housing projects. Stuyvesant Town is a high-density village (population 28,000) that sits, paradoxically, inside one of downtown Manhattan’s scrappiest neighbourhoods. Mere blocks from this Arcadian scene, there’s the chaotic First Ave and 14th Street interchange, with its low-rise tenement housing, pizza joints and nail bars, and a tide of blaring sirens servicing the “hospital alley” that runs up its western side. From the outside, Stuy Town presents a wall to the world – a heavy blanket of handsome, but uniform, red-brick buildings – that dwarfs the surrounding urban fabric for liberal stretches of city block. “It’s like a fortress,” says resident Valery Gherman (who is also the brother-in-law of our guest editor). “The rows of buildings only run around the perimeter, and the inside is just a big park.” Gherman, a makeup artist who left Auckland in 2002 to pursue work on high-profile fashion campaigns in New York, lives in an 11th-floor, twobedroom apartment that gets sun all day and is airy even by New Zealand standards. It is located within Peter Cooper Village, an annex on the northern side of Stuy Town. As Gherman is the first to admit, there’s a lot of snobbery aimed at the development. New Yorkers take a stubborn, almost belligerent, pride in what might seem to outsiders like the worst parts of their city – aggressive cab drivers, subway rats, how bad its garbage smells in the August heat and, naturally, the endless hustle for the best apartment. So for some, Stuy Town represents suburban blandness awkwardly grafted onto the raffish East Village. In a city of extremes where high and low culture rub shoulders, it’s a walled-off middle ground. Stuy Town is located in an area originally known as the Gas House District, which was an urban neighbourhood of 18 city blocks containing 3,100 families, 500 small businesses, three churches and three schools. The area was completely razed in the 1940s, and its residents forced to move in one of the largest urban-renewal projects in New York’s history. Stuy Town sought to answer a very real housing shortage problem for City Hall, exacerbated as veterans returned from the war. The architects took their cues from Le Corbusier’s “towers in a park” model,
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creating cost-effective, high-density living with a healthy ratio of landscaped green space. Each of the well-spaced 56 towers has a cross-shaped plan to maximise light and ventilation inside and each of the 11,250 apartments has a standardised layout, down to the wooden parquet floor in 30-centimetre squares. Irwin Clavan, who previously worked on the Empire State Building, led the team, but the first actual hire was Beverly Loraine Greene, the first documented African-American woman to be licensed as an architect in the United States. Ironically, Greene would have been banned from living at Stuyvesant, given it opened with a whites-only policy. The project was planned and carried out by a private firm, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. This private-public partnership inevitably threw up the controversy that has dogged Stuy Town since it opened in 1947. First, there was the issue of eminent domain (known as “compulsory purchase” in New Zealand). Could public streets and buildings such as schools revert to private ownership? Was it right for the city to exercise eminent domain for the profit of a privately held company? On paper, it seemed so – largely because city leaders enabled it to be so, with a series of new state laws and amendments. The perks included a 25-year tax break for Metropolitan Life. It also allowed the company to discriminate in selecting tenants. And although it gave priority to war veterans, it barred African Americans from living there on the grounds that black residents might harm Stuy Town’s profitability by making it less appealing to the white middle-class tenants it hoped to attract. Lawsuits citing anti-discrimination laws for public housing – including one brought by three AfricanAmerican war veterans – were then dismissed on the grounds that the property was private and its owners could refuse entry to whomever it wished. The community that lives in Stuy Town today is, of course, not a segregated one, nor it is gated. The first black family arrived in 1950 and, through the legal efforts of its own residents during the '60s, management was eventually forced to end its discriminatory practices. Perhaps, given how many people the complex soaks up from the city – one estimate, by architectural firm Mack Scogin Merrill Elam, suggests that three-and-a-half times more land would be required to house Stuy Town’s current residents if they were redistributed onto terra firma – it’s even worth putting the idea of similar developments back on the table. Certainly, one of the first moves by Bill De Blasio, the city’s newly elected mayor, was to roll out a $46 billion affordable-housing programme, paid for with city, state, federal – and yes, private – funds. However, they might want to take down a few notes from Stuy Town. It remains, says Gherman, predominantly white in a city fuelled by diversity. What’s
"In here, people go jogging. There are families with kids. They haven’t put on their special rock ‘n’ roll outfit to buy milk and toilet paper from the deli."
The living area of Valery Gherman's Stuy Town apartment features a poster by Chuck Close.
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also fascinating is how many of the conflicts that tarnished its beginnings are still in play. Gherman began renting his apartment in the middle of the financial crisis. In 2009, the rechristened MetLife sold Stuy Town to Tishman Speyer Properties for $6.1 billion – a deal that was as badly timed as it was stupendous. Just over three years later, Tishman Speyer defaulted, creating the biggest commercial property mortgage default in US history. At the same time, both past and present owners were defending a class-action lawsuit, brought by – again – their own market-rent paying tenants, for receiving a blanket tax benefit to maintain some rent-stabilised apartments. “It was a real David and Goliath situation,” says Gherman. Like many other less-wealthy tenants, he benefited from the corporate giants’ thwarted profiteering, and was given a rent holiday, after which it was stabilised to increase no more than three percent a year. “Before the crash, I heard you had to have a minimum income of a $100,000 to move in. Afterwards, they were just trying to entice people.” Nearly five years on, life in this oddball, cloistered place provides him with a much-needed respite. Gherman travels a lot – he’s most recently returned
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from shoots in Brazil and Jamaica, and last year travelled to Antarctica to do model Kate Upton’s makeup for the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue – and he’s done his time in rodent-ridden railroad apartments with bathtubs in the kitchen. “I’m like a young old guy now, or maybe an old young guy,” he laughs. He’s become friends with people on his floor, like Bob, a retired Broadway producer who leaves cookies and Nutcracker CDs under other tenants’ doors at Christmas. It was a friendship cemented after Hurricane Sandy, when electricity to Stuy Town was cut off for days and the residents bonded together to share food and help out elderly tenants who couldn’t manage the stairs. To Gherman, these relationships make Stuy Town feel more real than some of the super-cool neighbourhoods just outside the cluster of towers. “It’s nice to step out of your apartment and be surrounded by regular people who aren’t so hip, you know?” says Gherman. “You just need to walk down five streets to Tompkins Square Park. It’s fine. It’s still there. In here, people go jogging. There are families with kids. They haven’t put on their special rock ‘n’ roll outfit to buy milk and toilet paper from the deli. Sometimes, you just want to wear your PJs.”
Left Locals sunbathe by the East River and FDR Highway, avoiding the crowds of nearby Stuy Town Oval. Far left The 'Open 24 Hours' sign is from the iconic Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side. Gherman says when they stopped opening for 24 hours they tossed the sign to the curb, from where he reclaimed it: "My mother's maiden name was Katzeva, which is the Russianised ending, so it only made sense that I take the piece of New York history home. I also laugh when I go past Katz's and see the empty, faded space where the sign used to be." A Derek Henderson piece from his 'Mercy Mercer' series hangs on the wall.
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Above Mailboxes inside the entrance of Gherman's building. Right A print by French creative director Fabien Baron occupies a corner of the living room. Far right On a summer's day, locals amass at Stuy Town Oval to soak up the sun.
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The architects took their cues from Le Corbusier’s “towers in a park” model, creating costeffective, high-density living with a healthy ratio of landscaped green space. HOME NEW ZEALAND / 137
Gherman had to hang blankets over the window of the living area so he could watch the World Cup. On the bright side, he says, all that light mostly prevents him from getting into bad habits by watching TV during the day.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK Life in the high-density development of Stuyvesant Town, New York.
KAREN WALKER Stuy Town’s quite the selfcontained little Utopia and you must love it because you’ve been there for years now. What keeps you there? VALERY GHERMAN It’s like an oasis in the city and within walking distance to all my favourite neighbourhoods. As soon as I enter the complex the bustle of the city disappears. There are no cars and I’m surrounded by trees. And my apartment is very spacious.
I know you’ve got to know some of your neighbours pretty well. Is there a lot of neighbourhood chit-chat by the lifts each morning? The New York City equivalent of chatting over the garden fence?
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For sure. Some neighbours are just a very quick hello and there may be a little awkward silence in the elevator, then there are others like my neighbour Bob, who has lived on the same floor for more than 50 years with his wife Nina. He always keeps me filled in on any news relating to the property or about Broadway shows he produces that he’s thinking about taking on the road. The age is pretty mixed, with newer tenants like myself who have moved in over recent years, but I do enjoy the banter with the elderly tenants. Living in high-density New York, is there anything at all you miss about life in the 'burbs? Driving.
SHARE YOUR VIEWS Share the view from your window on Instagram and win.
THIS ISSUE IS ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS. In the following portfolio, friends of Karen Walker’s from around the world take snapshots from their windows, and we’re inviting you to do the same. Just take a photo and post it on Instagram with the hashtag #HOMEKW. Whoever takes the image we like best will win a limited-edition Karen Walker bicycle (shown above) worth $1200. All photos tagged #HOMEKW will be posted in the gallery on HOME’s new website, homemagazine.co.nz. Follow HOME on Instagram at @homenewzealand. Follow Karen Walker on Instagram at @karen_walker. TERMS AND CONDITIONS: The Promoter is Bauer Media Group NZ, Shed 12, City Works Depot, 90 Wellesley Street, Auckland. Entry into this competition is deemed acceptance of these terms and conditions. Entries close at 11:59pm on Sunday 5th October, 2014. Entrants must own the copyright to use any photographs that form part of their entries, and entrants grant the Promoter a perpetual, royalty-free licence to publish and distribute any images forming part of the entry. Entry in this competition is open to New Zealand residents aged 18 years and over. Employees and their immediate families of the Promoter, its related entities and agencies associated with this promotion are ineligible. The Promoter excludes all guarantees and warranties in respect of goods or services arising from entry into this competition to the fullest extent permitted by law. The winner will be chosen by the HOME magazine editorial team and Karen Walker. The decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. The Promoter reserves the right to substitute the prize with a prize of equal or greater value. Winners will be notified by email, and will be announced on HOME’s Facebook page facebook.com/HOME.NZ.mag and on homemagazine.co.nz.
Todd Selby PHOTOGRAPHER NEW YORK CITY, USA Where are you? In my living room. What are we looking at? Looking for the sun. What do you love about your view? New York, baby!!!!
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Marion Hume WRITER LONDON, UK “I work from our house in Kentish Town and our company also has an office two minutes away. The neighbourhood has gone from being a slum to being ridiculously groovy. We sometimes have lunch on the roof. The famous Mario’s Café in Kelly Street is just nearby, as is the Gospel Oak Lido where I swim. I can set my clock by my colleague Natacha’s kids playing hopscotch outside my home office – it means it’s 3.30, they’re home from school and so I better speed up.”
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Ari Seth Cohen PHOTOGRAPHER NEW YORK CITY, USA “I saw this lady outside my window and had to run down and ask if I could take her photograph. All the neighbours gathered around to tell me that she always wears a wonderful hat and that she has the best style. I love this woman’s spirit and the fact that she makes an effort to look her best every day.”
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Bill Granger RESTAURATEUR LONDON, UK “This is outside my new restaurant in Clerkenwell, sitting on the historic area of Clerkenwell Green. The Charles Dickens character Fagin used to hang out here and ply his trade. Despite the word 'green' in its name, the area hasn’t seen any greenery for more than 300 years. Opposite our restaurant is a very beautiful Georgian church and in its grounds is this enormous tree and crazy bird house sculpture. This forms a beautiful tableau framed by one of our windows. I’ve since found out that London Fieldworks created this beautiful piece.”
Preston Kwong BOUTIQUE OWNER & MARKETER SHANGHAI, CHINA “From my window I can see the street lined in Platanus trees, imported from France in 1902. It’s the formal Shanghai French Concession area, with historic lane houses, some architecturally designed during the period. The area is full of charm. I love the tree-lined, cobblestone roads, the cute bistros – a cafe called Amokka and a Spanish restaurant called Mr. Willis in particular – and lovely ambient atmosphere. It’s a great place to witness the contrasting cultures of East meets West.”
Kathryn Neale STYLIST NEW YORK CITY, USA “I love the view from my bedroom of the carriage house next door. I love seeing the people come home and turn on the lights. I can see just enough of my garden to admire it, but I’m not close enough to see the weeding that should be done. Mostly I love the clock tower in the distance: its hands light up at night and if I can leave the door open I can see it from my bath. It lets me know it’s bedtime, my favourite part of the day, when I crawl into bed with my kids for story time. Usually, I fall asleep before them. On a really perfect day my husband wakes me up 20 minutes later to tell me he's made dinner.”
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Laurent Philippon SESSION HAIRSTYLIST PARIS, FRANCE “I know it’s a cliché to think Paris is one of the most beautiful cities but it’s true to me. In 25 years I have never thought one minute to live elsewhere. Walking around, my eyes are still driven to every little corner, to the perspective and lighting this city has to offer. When I looked for an apartment, I wanted to find my 'balcony’ over Paris. This view is omnipresent when I do things around the house and I never got bored of it. The drama of the skies changing with the seasons is like so many different paintings. I have made my little 'cocoon’ in the sky and here I can rest for real.”
148 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
Jeremy Brown ASSOCIATE PROJECT MANAGER, UNITED NATIONS' ETHICAL FASHION INITIATIVE; NAIROBI, KENYA “I love this view because it’s where we do a lot of work with very talented, but poor and disenfranchised women. In slums and remote rural settings we produce accessories for major fashion houses in Africa and around the world. It’s about empowering the artisan, and bringing them back into the mainstream fashion industry. This location is also where it all began: early humans came from here and gradually spread across the globe. We too began our project here in Kenya, and now it is global. I like the symmetry of this. It’s such a privilege to work in this beautiful setting with these amazing people.”
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 149
Ed Barber DESIGNER NEW YORK CITY, USA “Across the street from our apartment on East 3rd Street in the East Village in New York is the majestic Most Holy Redeemer Church. It’s about 150 years old and built from beautiful ornately carved white stone, which reflects endless light into the apartment. It’s also so large that every window in the apartment looks out onto it – giving unparalleled privacy for New York!”
Dr Nicholas Walker PSYCHIATRIST WIGTOWN, SCOTLAND “From my loft study window, I can see the fabulous and formidable 1862 Wigtown County Buildings designed by Thomas Brown Jr and James Maitland Wardrop, whose Edinburgh architectural practice was strongly influenced by 'the French style’. Wigtown has been here for a thousand years, and re-invents itself to suit the times. It represents resilience and innovation, but without narcissism. It’s known as Scotland’s National Booktown and its literary links are legion. Living here makes us feel secure. And even when it rains, the sun still shines. I’m sure there’s a pot of gold here somewhere.”
151 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
Hideki Iida FASHION DISTRIBUTOR TOKYO, JAPAN “This view is taken from the window by the meeting room of our office. It looks out at the forest of Nezu Museum which is located in central Aoyama. I love the seasonal colours in this view: spring is pink because of sakura, summer is deep green, autumn is red and yellow and winter is brown.”
Simone Cipriani CHIEF TECHNICAL ADVISER, UNITED NATIONS' ETHICAL FASHION INITIATIVE; TUSCANY, ITALY “What I like of the view is that I see the typical countryside of Tuscany, with hills and olive trees, which reminds me of so many paintings and artists. It is a way to rest my mind. I don’t stay often as I am always travelling and live in Switzerland, but I always go back to read and look out of that window. In the back of the view, on clear days, I also see the dome of the cathedral of Florence.”
HOME NEW ZEALAND / 153
This page Subscribe to HOME now and receive this Karen Walker notebook free. In this photograph, the coffee table is from Douglas + Bec, the mug is from Everyday Needs, and the mechanical pencil is from Father Rabbit.
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A day of design store tours and expert briefings guided by HOME editor Jeremy Hansen
CHRISTCHURCH
FRIDAY OCTOBER 17
$75
Thanks to ASB Private Banking
Photography / Toaki Okano. Styling / Sarah Conder and Juliette Wanty. ‘Gallons’ table by Holly Beals for Candywhistle, ‘Faceture’ vases by Phil Cuttance and ‘Studio’ chair by Jason Whiteley for Resident.
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PRESENT
style safari
2014
CHRISTCHURCH
HOME’s Style Safari is coming to Christchurch! Our Style Safari is an exclusive day-long set of store visits and briefings on the latest design trends guided by HOME editor Jeremy Hansen. The day commences at 9.30am and includes briefings at Christchurch’s most important design stores, finishing around 5pm. Lunch is included. It’s the perfect day for anyone planning a building project or renovation. Numbers on the Style Safari are limited to 50, so reserve your tickets now.
HOW TO BOOK Book your tickets online at eventopia.co/ stylesafarichristchurch. Each ticket costs $75 and includes lunch and our all-day Style Safari experience. For information, contact Ashleigh Webb, 09 308 2850 or awebb@bauermedia.co.nz
ADVERTISING PROMOTION
Designworx
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As a leading Auckland Interior Designer, Amanda has years of experience and knowledge on the latest trends and products available. She has taught and speaks regularly on design at seminars, and is a professional member of The Designers Institute of NZ.
Turton/Oliver is a boutique interior design company working with private residences and commercial spaces across the county and internationally. Their devotion is to create beautiful spaces with understated subtle sophistication while all the while keeping their clients taste and personally ever present. We work with clients, builders, architects and developers nationally and internationally assisting with projects that exceed expectations and add value to projects.
For more information: E: amanda@designworxnz.co.nz Ph (09) 445 1098 / 027 492-1383 www.designworxnz.co.nz
Alcamo
Shop 16 Queenwood Village, Queenwood Ave, Hamilton Ph (07) 855 5247 info@turtonoliver.co.nz www.turtonoliver.co.nz
John Darke
Create the perfect look for your home by choosing from our extensive range of sofas, chairs, dining suites, lamps and cushions. Alcamo Interiors offers you a unique selection of fabrics, textures and colours to suit your home design needs. Whether it's for a total interior design package or an individual space, we provide a complete personalised in-home interior design service.
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Habberley's Habberley's Interior Design specialise in exterior and interior domestic design. Suppliers of furniture, curtains, blinds, wall coverings and accessories.
Queenstown Interiors
Our aim is to help make the experience of building or renovating an enjoyable one by drawing on our considerable years of experience in the interior design industry. While mindful of current trends we like to create a timeless environment specific to our client's needs.
TRENZSEATER At TRENZSEATER we have tailored a specialized full interior design service for clients who wish to have the expertise of professional, sound advice on the development of their interiors in their residential or commercial property. TRENZSEATER has also been internationally recognized as a finalist in the Andrew Martin Interior Design Review where our interior design work will feature among the top 50 interior designers in the world. Auckland – 80 Parnell Rd, Parnell, Ph (09) 303 4151, Christchurch – 121 Blenheim Rd, Riccarton, Ph: 03 343 0876. Visit www.trenzseater.com to view our Interior Design portfolio.
Ph (07) 856 5430 Mobile 027 474 8501 www.habberleys.co.nz
Luxury Interior Design at it’s best. Queenstown Interiors, Design, Procurement, Installation. Studio at 1/70 Glenda Drive, Queenstown Phone Julia 03 441 4185 or mobile 0274 750 510 www.queenstowninteriors.com
Interior Design Showcase
To advertise here contact Kim Chapman, phone: (07) 578 3646, mobile: 021 673 133, email: classifieds@xtra.co.nz
Designworx work closely with their clients helping transform their living spaces. If you are wanting something a bit different….Designworx can help you.
SOURCE – General
WINNER 2013 CREATIVE EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR THE MOST INNOVATIVE KITCHEN Visit our display kitchen at:
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To advertise here contact Kim Chapman, phone: (07) 578 3646, mobile: 021 673 133, email: classifieds@xtra.co.nz
DESIGNERS AND MANUFACTURERS OF BESPOKE CABINETRY & FINE FURNITURE www.seftonpowrie.com +64 9 278 4935
SURAIDO SIDEBOARD BY PHILLIP BADGER
photography by emma@indemic.co.nz
PO Box 28-700, Remuera Phone (09) 813 6192 www.croninkitchens.co.nz
155 The Strand, Parnell.
With more than 15 years of building experience and an established reputation with an excellent team of qualified subcontractors, Bungalow & Villa Renovation Specialists have the expert knowledge to turn your building dream into reality.
www.bungalowvilla.co.nz Phone (09) 629 0366/ 021 270 1388
SOURCE - General
TEA SO GREAT, WE’VE BOTTLED IT.
Design Comfort Style Visit our new showroom: 11 Earle Street, Parnell By Appointment Only www.chairobsession.co.nz Ph: 09 489 2626
Organic freshly brewed Iced Tea. No preservatives / Low calorie For stockists refer to: www.harneyteas.co.nz
WE WORK WITHIN YOUR BUDGET, FULL INTERIOR DESIGN SERVICE, INCLUDING SUPPLY AND INSTALLATION. CARPET • CURTAINS • LUXAFLEX BLINDS • TILES • FURNITURE KITCHEN AND BATHROOM DESIGN COLOUR CONSULTATION AND ACCESSORIES
Freestanding Baths Alpha baths tick all the boxes when it comes to style, durability and affordability.
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To advertise here contact Kim Chapman, phone: (07) 578 3646, mobile: 021 673 133, email: classifieds@xtra.co.nz
www.carmendesign.co.nz | 027 4331 984
SOURCE - General
Studio Fires The Studio series is the perfect compliment for both contemporary and traditional interiors. Clean air approved with high heat output efficiency with cooking and wetback options. Available from Fires by Design: 09 273 9227 and retailers nationwide. sales@firesbydesign.co.nz website: www.warmington.co.nz
Stylish things surround you like an aura ? Wrap yourself in luxury with the Harman bath towel.
glass artists Ola and Marie Höglund creators of New Zealand art glass since 1982
Use a little piece of smart Turkish tradition to dry you and yours.
Höglund Glassblowing Studio Visitors Welcome
Shop online at www.koza.co.nz
52 Lansdowne Road, Richmond, Nelson
Shop online www.hoglundartglass.com Ph 03 544 6500
To advertise here contact Kim Chapman, phone: (07) 578 3646, mobile: 021 673 133, email: classifieds@xtra.co.nz
MY FAVOURITE BUILDING Karen Walker creative director Mikhail Gherman is inspired by architect Peter Beaven's Auckland classic. “This building in High Street, Auckland, is a real outsider for me. It was designed by Peter Beaven in 1965 and it forms the Canterbury Arcade along with a couple of older buildings that run through to Queen Street. For me it's a great representation of the hotchpotch character of Auckland's inner city, the often haphazard way that buildings have been inserted and built around over the past century or so. I like the way this development has generously embraced its
neighbours, creating new connections between them as well as the arcade beneath. I also like this building’s shape – the slimness and elegance of it. When I first saw it I thought it looked like something from a classic ‘60s illustration. The other evocative aspect for me is that it reminds me of a distinguished sort of gentleman – someone from the ‘60s who still dresses in a certain way. It's a building that is timeless and yet admirably of its time.”
PHOTOGRAPHY / Mark Smith
162 / HOME NEW ZEALAND
Photography / Emily Andrews. Architect/ William Tozer
See more of HOME online. Visit our brand-new website and our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds for daily design inspiration. W
T I F
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Designed by Antonio Citterio for Flexform, Evergreen 2012 modular sofa features a fine leg and base giving it a floating look. Available in multiple configurations and fabrics or leathers.
Auckland + 64 9 523 2105 96E Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket
www.studioitalia.co.nz info@studioitalia.co.nz
SUPPLY 6644HNZ 644H