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A Mangawhai home is featured in a new coffee-table book celebrating some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most notable residential architecture.
Cape to Bluff Volume 2, by former architect-turned-writer Andrea Stevens and architectural photographer Simon Devitt, showcases 30 homes from across the country.
Among them is Dune House, a striking red-brick home on the edge of the Mangawhai estuary. The home was designed by Oto Group, built by Smith Construction and engineered by Hutchinson Consulting. It also featured on Grand Designs New Zealand.
The book spans a diverse range of projects, from compact 40-square-metre first homes to luxury residences exceeding 1000 square metres, exploring how architecture responds to landscapes, climate and community.
“Architecture, or more to the point, houses, are too often seen as objects or commodities in their appearance, location and value,” Stevens says.
“In this book, I explore how bespoke buildings in Aotearoa New Zealand come to be. It’s not about hype. It’s one step at a time, doing the hard work and navigating a project through each obstacle to realise a place for shelter and for family and friends.”
For Stevens, the homes featured in the book are not just finished objects, but the result of careful collaboration, persistence and problem-solving, making it a perfect addition to the book.
“As a culture, we’re overly obsessed with property,” Stevens says.
“Behind the scenes, architecture is a process of problem-solving, intuition, late nights, creative leaps and the reconciliation of myriad conflicting criteria.”
Devitt says the project allowed him to take a more personal approach to photographing architecture.
“Cape to Bluff began as a way of paying attention,” he says.
“I’ve spent much of my career photographing architecture, often in very controlled and intentional environments. This book is the opposite of that. It’s slower, more instinctive and more personal. It’s about responding to the land rather than directing it.”
Cape to Bluff Volume 2 retails for $99 and can be ordered here: aotearoabooks.co.nz/cape-to-bluff-volume-2/
