He’s exploring the stone barn enclave that’s Closeburn Lodge with Francis Whitaker of Mason & Wales Architects. The view he’s going bananas about is of Lake Wakatipu. It’s a pathologically enthusiastic tone that doesn’t let up as Spencer, of Love It or Checklist It fame, strings collectively superlatives, coming to phrases with structure within the Aotearoa panorama.
Views are a recurring theme. See architect John Irving at Cliffhanger Home on the Hibiscus Coast: “So, that is the wow second right here with the view. You type of get drawn to it, like moths to the sunshine.” Spencer sees the view as an expression of a staycation life-style. He’s additionally taken by the materiality. “There’s an terrible lot of concrete. I see numerous metal. It’s fairly moody and darkish and masculine.” Moods, usually “masculine”, characteristic giant within the collection, too.
I’m all the time fascinated by what occurs when mainstream media meets structure, particularly when the collision entails a non-expert taking over the function of architectural critic. Spencer joins an eccentric lineage that runs from then Prince Charles’ notorious carbuncle speech to our personal Matthew Ridge (Designing Desires) and all the time, in fact, Kevin McCloud, who turned a celeb with Grand Designs.
The result’s that the critique could be, properly, overly reductive and cliché heavy.
Spencer follows three major strains of inquiry — views, moods and that previous favorite, indoor-outdoor circulate. His big-picture evaluation: “The problem is to enrich this dramatic panorama, not attempt to compete with it as a result of, let’s face it, you might be by no means going to win.”
A number of the examples are entertaining. At Piha Home, architect Daniel Marshall likens the house to a bulldog sitting and going through the ocean. “The panorama is saying, ‘You need to take me on?’” Spencer agrees that the home stands staunch for excessive occasions. “It’s all smooth, calm, cool, darkish.”
At Clifftops in Takapuna, a collaboration by architects Pete Bossley and Finn Scott, the speak is concerning the undulating floating timber ceiling and the curved, “sluggish” stair. Spencer brings out some favorite adjectives: “masculine, luxurious, indulgent, but extraordinarily tasteful”. Temper. “Simply off the charts, fully off the flipping charts.”
Lake Home, by architect Anna-Marie Chin, is on the banks of Lake Hayes in Queenstown. “That tremendous view — the lake, the mountains. It’s simply wow,” raves Spencer. “It feels theatrical – darkish partitions, metallics, uncommon use of textures and these intense spots of color. It feels extremely trendy. It looks like a Bond villain’s lair.” Goodness.
There may be numerous speak of luxurious existence. “First impression, this looks like a super-cool Mediterranean seaside membership,” he says of the Andrew Patterson-designed Native Rock Home on Waiheke Island. “This may very well be the south of France, may very well be in Spain.”
However the prize-winner on this class is undoubtedly the 1500sqm Copper Home in Queenstown, additionally by Anna-Marie Chin. Media room, pool, gymnasium, golf simulator, therapeutic massage room, sauna, steam room and carry. “The pool, the glass, the sky and the lake… That is simply blowing my thoughts. Overwhelmed. I actually am… I’ve by no means seen something like this earlier than and it’s not simply the opulence; it’s the scale.”
Nation Home within the Metropolis in Parnell, with a severely deliberate backyard, together with sculptures, fruit bushes and placing inexperienced, has architect and presenter in a descriptive duet. Spencer: “It looks like I’ve walked into a large, elegant glasshouse… a really habitable home.” Architect Andrew Patterson: “Sure, it reeks of being used.”
At Household Retreat in Waimauku, which opens onto a pool and a pond, architect Jo Craddock talks about how structure can remodel a second and a temper. “One thing about this place makes me really feel completely satisfied, really feel good, really feel immediately joyful.” To which Spencer, who by no means stops smiling, provides: “It’s a home that makes you smile.”
It’s a reduction that the collection contains a number of more-modest houses. Proprietor and architect Man Tarrant’s Courtyard Home in Level Chevalier offers with a tough triangular website. “I considered it as a secret walled backyard,” says Tarrant. “I wished individuals to be intrigued as they walked previous.”
Probably the greatest surprises is Swallow Level, the house of architect Noel Lane, set among the many huge sculpture park with imported wildlife — water buffalo, ostrich, giraffe — of Alan Gibbs’ farm in Kaipara. On this surreal panorama, Swallow Level is surprisingly low key.
“It’s not a seaside home and it’s not a farmhouse. It’s a rustic coastal factor and I used to be attempting to grasp what that meant architecturally,” says Lane. For him, it means a collection of tentlike constructions — luxurious residing in nature. “Noel wished to create a sense of nostalgia for easier instances — household tenting holidays tents by the seaside,” says Spencer. Nicely, type of.
Lane throws open an enormous sliding wall to the bed room. “Sleeping beneath a fly within the bush — bloody sensible.” Spencer is, unsurprisingly, gobsmacked. “By no means, ever have I been in a house anyplace on the planet the place a lot of the surface is in — even to the extent of outdoor furnishings being indoors!”
Spencer’s gee whizz fashion makes the present a bit much less architectspeak and extra actual property complement. However one result’s that structure comes out of its elitist bubble to parade its wares in entrance a a lot wider viewers. Like structure in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Greatest Properties has its moments.
