Haven

Where do you call home? We live on Meola Road in Point Chevalier, in a block of four townhouses. We were apprehensive about living so close to another house but are so lucky that we became best friends with our neighbours, James and Patrick. We’re always traipsing next door in our pyjamas for late-night cocktails. It’s so fun – it feels like we’re in a uni hall. Who lives with you? My fiance Stuart and stepsons Zachary and Elijah, who live with us half the time. What is your home like? It’s a new-build modern townhouse. When we were looking to buy a new house, we toyed with the idea of buying a fixer-upper to renovate, but as neither of us is a handy DIYer and we’re planning on growing our family,…

Couple goals If you haven’t yet discovered the elegant simplicity that is MMW Home, now might be an excellent time. The West Auckland bespoke furniture and cabinetry business – full name Mr & Mrs Ward – offers a range of cool basics and seasonal pieces. Its sleek, contemporary Slim Jim Drawers (left) are a customer favourite, and can be made to order in any colour – in this case, Resene Raptor. The husband and wife team behind the brand, designer Janice Kumar-Ward and cabinetmaker Julian Ward, have been making beautiful furniture together for more than 13 years. mmwhome.nz Light it up Auckland designer and sculptor Gidon Bing, who operates a multidisciplinary global business from a boatshed at Ōrākei, is releasing a gorgeous new ceramic lamp (left) under the brand Raumform. The brand brings…

“You must drink from places, for that is where wisdom resides,” proclaims the introduction to this photographic coffee table book by Kiwi designer David Trubridge, best known for his stylish handcrafted wooden lights and furniture. It’s a quote from anthropologist Keith Basso that David has taken to heart during his travels all over the planet. Now, David has pulled together his travel photos and journals into a visual love letter to the land, from the white-out of the Antarctic peninsula to the sun-baked lands of Arizona’s Grand Canyon. Antarctica, it turns out, first inspired David’s interest in photography, and since then the Hawke’s Bay resident has never roamed without his camera. Images in the book include snow-quilted mountains in Japan, craggy ranges in the far north of Argentina and an abandoned home…

The 1970s and 80s weren’t kind to many things but they provided rich fodder for Wellington poet and writer Kate Camp, from her idyllic childhood and pothead teenage years to the sobering reality of adulthood. This memoir is a clever rattle through the messy ebb and flow of an ordinary Kiwi life. You Probably Think This Song Is About You by Kate Camp (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35) Aliens could have landed on Earth and I wouldn’t have noticed, thanks to the engrossing 16th novel from award-winning writer Lisa Jewell. This is a patchwork of stories – a bag of human bones found in the Thames, siblings who survived a house of horrors, and the tragedy that binds them. The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell (Penguin Random House, $37) Northland writer Lauren Roache’s…

Enduring houses have the power to pull us towards them in ways that are not immediately recognised, as is the case with Maree Glass and her character cottage in Hamilton East. Maree, a contemporary artist and the manager of Sandz Gallery in Frankton Village, came to Kirikiriroa more than two decades ago, from a previous life of dairy farming at nearby Pirongia. Her first house in the city was a sprawling character home complete with pool that she shared with her children, Morgan, Matthew and Ben. Around that time she also completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wintec School of Media Arts, which was a long-held ambition. Content with the area, she hasn’t strayed far since. She went on to renovate an ex-state house overlooking the river, including adding a studio…