The 2026 Interior of the Year, designed by Auckland studio Material Creative, transforms a 1970s home in Vancouver, Washington into a richly layered, hotel-inspired retreat where bold colour, nostalgic glamour, and New Zealand design sensibilities converge.
Wedged into a cliffside beside the wild harbour
of Wellington’s Eastern Bays, this year’s Home
of the Year is a masterly object full of sculpture
and craftsmanship, grandeur and human scale.
Since 1959, Bledisloe House has anchored central Auckland, its rhythmic concrete grid and board-formed structure embodying the optimism of post-war modernism. As the building enters a new chapter, Alexander &CO. has been appointed to reimagine its interiors with renewed purpose.
Time is the judge of great design. Longevity, in both aesthetic appeal and quality, remains one of the surest measures of whether an object has achieved design’s imperative to stay relevant and useful.
Aotearoa’s dynamic landscape is dotted with rural settlements — microcosms of raw natural beauty that the country is known for. Mangakuri in Hawke’s Bay is one of those places.
Long and low on the crest of a vineyard-covered hill, this Hawke’s Bay home by Clarkson Architects unfolds across a series of richly layered spatial and material experiences.
Cities across the globe face an ongoing challenge: how to deliver density that makes our cities better places for people. This is a complex and deeply consequential task. Are our current planning systems up to it?
In Wānaka, where alpine peaks meet the enduring traditions of year-round holiday living, Johnston Architects has reimagined the familiar crib for a new generation.
Kuroi Ma translates to ‘black void’, an apt name for a home that exists as a paradox: recessive in tone yet vivid in its context, it is the only one of its kind within a dense and growing subdivision, where a sea of interchangeable brick-and-tile homes stretches across the landscape.
At Waihi Beach, a new wellness destination reimagines the familiar language of contemporary recovery spaces.
Aotearoa’s design community is often celebrated for the quality of its work, but less frequently for the relationships that sustain it. ‘In Good Company’, a new short film series by Powersurge, turns its attention to the creative exchanges behind the work.
On the shores of Lake Rotoiti, this holiday home draws on the region’s rich geological history — from the magma deep beneath the earth’s surface to the mossy greens and pristine blues of the forest and lake.
On Thursday 30 July, more than 400 architects, designers, industry partners and friends gathered beneath the Dome at Auckland Museum to celebrate the very best of New Zealand interiors at the 2026 Interior of the Year Awards.
On a rugged stretch of State Highway 1, part-way between Kaikōura and Blenheim, where steep hills fall towards the Pacific and weather shapes the land with force, Three Sixty Architecture has devised something entirely fitting — and particularly appealing.
Emerging from the Te Ārai dunes as two rammed earth pavilions offset to reconcile sun path and sea view, the Double Courtyard House responds to its landscape by, literally, being made from it.
If the 2026 Interior of the Year Awards revealed anything about the state of surface design in Aotearoa, it is that natural clay and lime plaster is quietly everywhere.
There is a particular kind of colour problem that hospitality designers rarely admit to: the room that already works.
Colour is one of architecture’s most expressive materials. Here, we explore the Resene palettes used in two Interior of the Year finalists where bold gestures and sumptuous detailing combine to deepen the spatial conversation.
The homestead at Mt Cardrona Station by Leuschke Group Architects takes its cues from the wool-sheds and mining structures of the Cardrona Valley, but the charm and uniqueness of the project lies in how those references are carried inside.
Russell McVeagh’s Wellington practice, redesigned by Unispace across three levels of 157 Lambton Quay, renegotiates a spatial contract without pretending it away.
Bringing more floor space to this much-loved Napier pizzeria took sensitivity and collaboration by OTO Group, which worked closely with the owners and a large number of craftspeople to ensure that nothing treasured was lost in the expansion.
An interior devised as part calling card, part mental postcard to incoming visitors to Aotearoa, the International Convention Centre achieves a level of soft diplomacy through architecture and plenty of art.
This mid-century property, known as Brightwater, is full of quirks — from its aerodynamic uplifted soffits to an underground doomsday bunker — so, when it came to designing a new kitchen, designer Katie Scott wanted it to be equally quirky and sympathetic to its original 1960s charm.
Since 1936 HOME has showcased New Zealand residential architecture; homes that are designed to inspire, challenge and delight, by the country’s best architects.
In every issue we invite our readers into these homes, telling their owners’ stories at the same time as explaining how these remarkable buildings came to be.
Simultaneously, HOME celebrates New Zealand’s best design, interiors and landscapes – every element of the places we call home. It explores the wealth of creative talent that exists in New Zealand and our evolving built environment.
HOME is a highly collectible and beloved part of people’s lives; at once contemporary and timeless, thoughtful and stimulating.
With its contemporary look and feel and omni-channel offering, it holds its own at the forefront of our media landscape.
Entries to Home of the Year 2024 are now open.
Home of the Year is an annual programme that celebrates the country’s best new homes, and comes with a $10K prize for the overall winner.
Click here to enter, or to find out more about the 2024 awards programme.
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In the Coromandel, a home with a humble profile and a thoughtful design makes the most of a stunning location.
This sculptural Northland bach is a perfect north arrow on a remote farm high above the sea.
Built with awe-inspiring attention to detail, this Arrowtown home is a fresh interpretation of a familiar Otago rural vernacular.
Part gallery, part sculptural abode, this award-winning home above Takapuna Beach is surprisingly secluded.
A hilltop home in Dunedin becomes a gallery of sorts, its form an object of art itself – one of warmth, playfulness, and urbanity.
With the sun on its bow and the community at its stern, this is a house in which the elements are always front of mind.
A mature and restrained response to an awe-inspiring location. The architect has combined a wide range of influences — from Sri Lankan to,
This Auckland home delightfully reimagines city living, marrying privacy with insightful and intimate layers of connection.
