Innholdsfortegnelse for February/March 2022 i homestyle

“Working with my hands helps me connect with my creativity better than a lot of time online.” The other day, I was chatting to a friend about the challenges of decision-making when you’re considering updates at home. He mentioned he’d been looking for paint colours for his kids’ playroom and turned to Instagram to see how others ‘got the look’, only to spend ages searching for something he wasn’t even sure existed! Although doing some online research is a natural starting point for most of us, our conversation got me thinking that we shouldn’t be fooled into believing it presents a fail-safe shortcut. In my opinion, it’s always well worth setting aside some time to investigate paint options IRL and in your unique space. What does a colour look like…

Some of Raukura Turei’s earliest memories are of time spent along the black-sand shoreline of Tāmaki Makaurau’s Te Henga/Bethells Beach and walking through the Waitākere Ranges. The west-coast whenua/land has been a pivotal locale for the evolution of the artist, architect and designer, and remains a constant source of material inspiration and a place for meditation, where she can pursue her artistic endeavours under the guidance of her tīpuna/ancestors. I first kōrero with Raukura (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngā Rauru Kītahi) during Tāmaki Makaurau’s extended lockdown. She greets me on Zoom after a busy day. As we start our call, her partner Mokonuiarangi (Moko) and two-year-old daughter Hinauri (Hina) enter the room. The flow of te reo in her natural tongue in combination with her maternal essence is my first…

This is the story of a house. In Mount Maunganui, beside a golfcourse, near the beach, it’s a strikingly chic house that appears to place the focus firmly on aesthetics. In actual fact, there’s much more to it than just good looks — here, it’s comfort that’s key. At heart, this is a healing house, where a hardworking family of five has loved and grieved loss, recovered from illness, regrouped and joyfully risen again. This is a special house. Interior designer Annique Heesen of Gezellig Interiors was one of the professionals charged with the task of realising this happy home. She’d worked with its owners, Thorne Group Architecture and the building team from Thorne Group on a number of previous occasions, and that solid foundation of trust and understanding has…

Words of wisdom from a relative resonated in Catherine David’s mind when she was redesigning her garden. “My aunt Margaret advised me to consider what it looks like from inside the house,” says the Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland product designer. A creative spirit such as Catherine might naturally see the value in appreciating beauty from multiple viewpoints, but it’s not something everyone would consider. This is the level of thought that has formed the foundation of the Ōrākei Creek property she and her otolaryngologist husband Michel have called home for 23 years. Plant by plant, the couple gradually built up the original garden, adopting a tropical theme through layers of different-sized leaves, natives and palms. Last year, they extended this theme by revisiting the landscaping during the renovation of their home with…

SKIP TO MILOU MILOU How does made-to-order, zero-waste bedding in colour combos you curate sound? If it makes you happy and you know it, don’t sleep on it — hop to it. Milou Milou consciously crafts duvet covers, sheets and pillowcases from end-of-line flax linen (one of the most sustainable and healthy textiles around, which needs little irrigation to grow, improves soil quality, and is hypoallergenic and antibacterial), and has it OEKO-TEX certified so you know it’s free of harmful substances. Head to the website to handpick a set or singles in standard or bespoke sizing. miloumilou.com WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES… … another one opens — in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland’s case to Faradays, a new luxury department store by Edward and Constance von Dadelszen of fashion label Dadelszen and jewellery brand…

How to… - This dynamic kids’ room uses bright spots to enhance a block-colour backdrop. Recurring details like the painted headboards and frames are a bespoke bit of fun that could inspire children and teens to engage with their own creativity. - To recreate these headboards, measure your beds to determine the width and height of the mattresses and bases. We made our headboards 40cm wider than the beds and twice the height (to accommodate pillows propped up against the wall). - Use a metre ruler and pencil to draw a rectangle for each headboard on the wall, then one at a time, starting in a top corner, draw squiggles that extend out from each line and back to meet it again. - Paint the squiggly outer edges of your…

In a nutshell, Katrina Wolff helps people optimise their gardens, placing an emphasis on healthy soil via biodynamic methods. She reckons we’re close to a tipping point at which composting — aka making soil from waste — will be considered cool, and as far as she’s concerned, it’s an integral part of any successful plot, a skill with a status equivalent to that of growing food and flowers. With the guidance of the consultations, online school, workshops and workplace classes she offers through her business Blue Borage, her customers are quickly able to cancel their garden-waste-collection services and put their compost and weeds to good use. So you call yourself a ‘soilpreneur’…? The term came about as a play on the words ‘solopreneur’, and ‘soulpreneur’ — I’m all three! In…

Isaac Lindesay says his new business Makespace’s tagline ‘Everything you need and nothing you don’t’ about sums it up. Makespace offers a ready-designed range of minimalist, architectural dwellings crafted from top-notch materials to be compact but supremely functional and provide a close connection to the surrounding environment. They’re built off site before being installed in your chosen location in an experience that’s as enjoyable as it should be when you’re investing in any home or bach, whether it’s a lower-cost solution or not. We got the finer details from Isaac and his partner Beck Wadworth. Isaac, what motivated you to start this venture? I’ve been interested in practical, hands-on work from a young age, which over the years has led me to work in landscaping, building-material product development and house…

Born of a desire to develop a beautiful place in which to shop that also brings a community together to share knowledge during what can be a joyful yet complicated time, there’s an adorable new arrival in Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland’s Newmarket. Alongside their just-opened retail store, Nature Baby has conceived a fresh concept, Community by Nb, which functions as a practitioner room, sustainable community kitchen and space in which to hold wellbeing workshops. We had a quick chat with company co-founder Jacob Faull about it. So Jacob, what inspired the aesthetic? Essentially, it’s based around ideas of creation, nature and situationist practices. Guided by one of our core brand values, sustainability, we wanted to respect and work with the industrial architecture of the original 1940s building, with its high stud…

New Zealand’s number-one showcase for contemporary art, Aotearoa Art Fair, is all set for 2022’s programme, which will see more than 40 local and Australian galleries present the work of 180-plus respected artists, and include artist talks, interactive workshops, outdoor sculpture, cocktails and then some in the heart of downtown Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. This year, there’s an addition to this lineup of very good stuff, He Iti, a section established to champion new galleries and artist-run spaces. The name He Iti was gifted to the fair by Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne’s Hoea! Gallery & Project Space, an artist-run initiative created and curated by wahine Māori with a goal to uphold mātauranga Māori/Māori knowledge. Explaining the choice of name, Hoea!’s director Melanie Tangaere Baldwin says, “In what has the potential to be an overwhelming…

Pōneke/Wellington-based artist Ann Shelton’s personal ikebana-inspired revival has resulted in some astonishingly beautiful works. Like all good images, those in her series jane says can be appreciated in and of themselves, but there is an interesting story behind them. One chilly morning, a taxi driver and I negotiate our way into the hills beyond Wadestown to Wilton, where Ann lives with her designer/art director partner Duncan Munro in a 1957 home designed by Czech-born architect Frederick Ost. In 2020, the couple won the Resene Total Colour Heritage Award for the spectacular transformation of the house, having restored most of the interior colours back to their original vibrant palette, and the place is a joy to enter. On the dining table are a number of vases bursting with camellias in disarray.…

When it comes to design, Deb Brown loves corners. “They drive sociability,” she says. “If you’re at a pub, people always gravitate to where two bench seats meet because that’s where the talking takes place.” She applied this theory on a larger scale to the revamped layout of her family’s 1930s bungalow in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. She knew that if she based its design on an ‘L’ shape, the angle would create a courtyard and social connection that a home of a different configuration might not. Deb and her husband Chris Schofield bought their Point Chevalier do-up in 2017, having lived elsewhere in the neighbourhood for a decade. The orientation of the long, thin site that faces the wrong way for the afternoon sun meant the L-shape worked, creating a courtyard…

Amid an outlook of dappled green with a soundtrack of chirping cicadas and the thwack of tennis balls coming from the club behind the hedge, it’s easy to forget you’re fairly close to the central city when you’re standing on the deck of this home in Remuera, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. When asked whether he considers himself a mid-century enthusiast, its owner and architect Julian Guthrie says, “Absolutely, yes! I really love the early modernism. There were exciting, experimental things happening internationally and here in New Zealand, resulting in some lovely little places. Typically, they were simply built and modest in scale, but a lot of the language of the architecture of that time still feels fresh and interesting.” During the hunt for a place to call home with his wife Georgie…

SENSUAL YOU UP Wrap yourself in the heady embrace of this genderless scent for skin and spaces. Evocative of intimacy without being sexual, the latest fragrance from Curio Noir, Ngutu Pā (‘lips that touch’), was inspired by sensual stories from Māori myths, and EE Cummings’ poem I Like My Body When It Is With Your. The latter was translated into te reo as part of perfumer Tiffany Witehira’s collab with Māori and other creatives on this project that also includes a film and hand-thrown candle vessel. curionoir.com LE PIQUE-NIQUE You might be a dab hand at pulling together a picnic by now, but there’s always room for improvement, eh? If the sine qua non of a successful outdoor gathering is the food and something to sit on, up your game…

Marlar Boon’s grandma/phwa phwa Mabel, known to most as ‘Auntie’, came to Aotearoa in 1976. After being taught how to cook by an Indian friend, she began inviting people to her home to share her dishes, and when a couple suggested she open a restaurant, she did — a Burmese eatery called Monsoon that went on to become a Pōneke/Wellington icon. Now, years after Monsoon’s closure, Marlar has opened a restaurant in the late Mabel’s name. You must have spent a bit of time at Monsoon as a kid, Marlar? Sadly, no — it wrapped up two years before I was born. I did live a few doors away from my phwa phwa, though, so I remember being in the kitchen with her. My memories of her and food revolve…