Modernist Bunker Residence
A low-slung, linear form recessed into the foothills of the Southern Alps. A semi-subterranean minor dwelling, and a family home that creates a strong and almost symbiotic relationship with the alpine landscape.
A low-slung, linear form recessed into the foothills of the Southern Alps. A semi-subterranean minor dwelling, and a family home that creates a strong and almost symbiotic relationship with the alpine landscape.
Perched above a cliff edge, where parkland softens into water, this reworked 1980s home is a careful act of continuation.
Wedged into a cliffside beside the wild harbour of Wellington’s Eastern Bays, this year’s Home of the Year winner by Stevens Lawson Architects is a masterly object full of sculpture and craftsmanship, grandeur and human scale.
Home of the Decade (2015—2025) winning firm RTA Studio has refined a Southern language of gables and barn-like forms into a coveted residential style that is equally at home in the Alps as it is in the inner city.
This home on Kāpiti Coast knows its place, not just as a shelter for its people but as a small part of a much wider whole.
Perched high on a Titirangi hillside with sweeping views from the Waitākere Ranges to the Auckland City skyline, this modest home carries a larger architectural intent.
There is a certain composure to the work of Stevens Lawson Architects — an ongoing dialogue of ideas that seems to flow between projects. Here, on a ridgeline at the meeting point of Auckland suburbs Glen Innes and Glendowie, that conversation finds expression in an unexpected setting.
A much-loved beachfront bach in Whangaparāoa is redesigned as a refined coastal home.
Seemingly unmovable cliffs on one of Waiheke’s most public and busy stretches of beach made this project undesirable to many. Perseverance and design nous, however, showed how to maximise the use of a difficult site for exceptional architectural and planning results.
Named the 2025 Home of the Year, this unmissable yet small beach house took 14 years to complete.
In the Bay of Plenty settlement of Te Puna, a compact dwelling channels the enduring architectural language of the rural shed — robust and quietly attuned to its landscape.
The latest Studio John Irving Architects addition to the Tara Iti golfing compound is a restrained, single-level courtyard house with an old red tractor at its heart.
A hillside sculpture in which to live and work, this family home and office — the 2024 City Home of the Year — is generous in places, intimate in others.
A 150m² off-grid home for two on Waiheke Island. Birdlife abounds; vegetables are grown and harvested on site year-round.
For the couple who bought this apartment in the heart of the city, the brief to rework their dwelling — set within a ten-floor building — was simple: a sanctuary that offered comfort and ease while they visited family, and the freedom to lock up and leave.
Japanese-influenced, this shingle-clad small holiday home is an exercise in restraint, minimalism and inherent warmth.
Cantilevering dramatically towards the water, this design defies the constraints of a steep site, anchoring the heart of the home to the land.
A low-slung, linear form recessed into the foothills of the Southern Alps. A semi-subterranean minor dwelling, and a family home that creates a strong and almost symbiotic relationship with the alpine landscape.
Perched above a cliff edge, where parkland softens into water, this reworked 1980s home is a careful act of continuation.
Wedged into a cliffside beside the wild harbour of Wellington’s Eastern Bays, this year’s Home of the Year winner by Stevens Lawson Architects is a masterly object full of sculpture and craftsmanship, grandeur and human scale.
Home of the Decade (2015—2025) winning firm RTA Studio has refined a Southern language of gables and barn-like forms into a coveted residential style that is equally at home in the Alps as it is in the inner city.
Tucked into the expansive alpine landscape outside Arrowtown, this home takes its cues from the rugged vernacular of Central Otago, sharpened with a distinctly contemporary edge.
An urban treehouse in the heart of Auckland, this project reimagines how architecture can engage with nature in a dense urban setting.
A sophisticated, elegant, and entirely relaxing gem that shines above Waiheke Island.
This home on Kāpiti Coast knows its place, not just as a shelter for its people but as a small part of a much wider whole.
Perched high on a Titirangi hillside with sweeping views from the Waitākere Ranges to the Auckland City skyline, this modest home carries a larger architectural intent.
There is a certain composure to the work of Stevens Lawson Architects — an ongoing dialogue of ideas that seems to flow between projects. Here, on a ridgeline at the meeting point of Auckland suburbs Glen Innes and Glendowie, that conversation finds expression in an unexpected setting.
A much-loved beachfront bach in Whangaparāoa is redesigned as a refined coastal home.
Occupying a remarkable site above Leigh, this house by Crosson Architects approaches the landscape with admirable restraint.
In an otherwise flat paddock, this industrial-seeming house by Ponting Fitzgerald Architects presents a wonderfully simple and sculptural response to both site and client.
Seemingly unmovable cliffs on one of Waiheke’s most public and busy stretches of beach made this project undesirable to many. Perseverance and design nous, however, showed how to maximise the use of a difficult site for exceptional architectural and planning results.
Named the 2025 Home of the Year, this unmissable yet small beach house took 14 years to complete.
In the Bay of Plenty settlement of Te Puna, a compact dwelling channels the enduring architectural language of the rural shed — robust and quietly attuned to its landscape.
The latest Studio John Irving Architects addition to the Tara Iti golfing compound is a restrained, single-level courtyard house with an old red tractor at its heart.
A hillside sculpture in which to live and work, this family home and office — the 2024 City Home of the Year — is generous in places, intimate in others.
Named the 2023 Home of the Year, this expansive family home stretches across a quiet valley on the outskirts of Auckland. Conceived as both sanctuary and stage, it gathers a series of spaces in a linear procession — anchoring, protecting and embracing the rhythms of daily life.
A home for a family of five on the edge of a park. A bucolic landscape, a busy city road, and a house the intermediary; a unified buffer between.
Two buildings — one beneath the canopy, the other hovering above it — occupy a steep pōhutukawa-clad site on Auckland’s wild west coast.
A 150m² off-grid home for two on Waiheke Island. Birdlife abounds; vegetables are grown and harvested on site year-round.
Set on a steep coastal site at the end of a peninsula, this multi-generational holiday home is broken down into two dwellings — connected by an underground tunnel and wine cellar.
For the couple who bought this apartment in the heart of the city, the brief to rework their dwelling — set within a ten-floor building — was simple: a sanctuary that offered comfort and ease while they visited family, and the freedom to lock up and leave.
Japanese-influenced, this shingle-clad small holiday home is an exercise in restraint, minimalism and inherent warmth.
Having found a generous plot of land in Remuera, Auckland architect and owner Paul Clarke of Studio2 Architects set out to design a ‘forever home’ — one that paid homage to the past while embracing the present and preparing for the future.
There’s a quiet poetry embedded in the landscape surrounding this home — a subtlety that has been translated into form by Rowe Baetens Architecture. Drawing from the nearby volcanic terrain, the architects have created a spatial and material language that is deeply grounded in place.
Cantilevering dramatically towards the water, this design defies the constraints of a steep site, anchoring the heart of the home to the land.
Julian Guthrie reimagines a beachfront home in Pauanui, transforming what was once a 1970s party pad into a refined, minimalist escape.
In one of the most stringent heritage-zoned streets of Herne Bay, Hoxha Bailey Architects faced an arduous task: securing approval for a substantial addition to a prominent double-fronted villa.
Inspired by a very internationalist, robust coastal home for an award-winning film, this beach house by Sumich Chaplin Architects offers ambience and plenty of drama.
Expressive geometries, a high level of craft, and connections with its landscape elevate a small number of materials into a polished, relaxed home full of moments of wonder and surprise.
This sophisticated home by Case Ornsby is a sculptural response to the Waipara Valley’s unique geology.
Set on a long, narrow site in Papamoa this family home takes full advantage of its coastal position while negotiating a demanding footprint.
A building of the South Pacific. A sculptural pavilion of asymmetry that came first. A trio of pavilions, one for living and two for sleeping, that came second. A place for contemplation; spaces for restoration.
An exploration of materiality, a celebration of craft, and a desire to create a memorable sculpture within a tight, city-fringe context have resulted in this multi-award–winning home by Jack McKinney Architects.
Gel Architects have transformed a long-abandoned, dilapidated church into four refined apartments, deftly balancing ecclesiastical gravitas with a dose of contemporary cool.
Conceived as a sleepout for guests, this adjunct to a holiday home is an amalgamation of utilitarian materials, functionality, whimsy, and zen vibes.
A triangular form bedded into the hillside. A place to enjoy a slower pace of life. A warm home; a living roof, soft timbers, light stalks.
A seemingly simple, two-bedroom box on stilts above a precipice in Rangiputa hides a microscopic level of detail and clear-headed architectural thinking.
A mature pōhutukawa and Scandinavian influences have come together in this jaw-dropping property on Auckland’s North Shore.
On a rugged, bush-covered site on Waiheke’s east coast, Chris Tate envisaged a floating pavilion — crisp and minimal; an expression of geometric clarity; a vehicle for relaxation, at one with the land and the sea.
In the heart of Ōrākei, RTA Studio has designed a striking addition to a well-known streetscape. Powerful, enigmatic, and dynamic, its jagged roofline and folded steel form float above the land, inviting observation and curiosity.
High above Little Vivian Bay on Kawau Island, a convivial pavilion sits long and low in a forest of kānuka — part kinetic sculpture, part holiday home.
Managing the balance between architecture and ostentation can be a tightrope. It’s something that José Gutiérrez thinks deeply about.
Architect John Irving is well known for his work at Te Arai and Tara Iti — architecture deftly defined by proportion, sculpture, and light. His homes in this revered coastal region share an understanding of place: open to the sea air and defined by a sense of understated luxury.
A game of attractive opposites: Georgian and modernist, feminine and masculine, barn and villa — this elegant home by Ponting Fitzgerald Architects finds a sweet balance in its inherent tension.
A measured expansion and renovation by Studio John Irving Architects has lent theatricality, elegance, and soul to a tired villa on Auckland’s North Shore.
Do the maths and this 60-metre by 6-metre house adds up to the complete package. At 360 square metres, it delivers 360-degree living — as holistic as it is whole.
Perched on the banks of the Waikato River, this home by Chow Hill Architects resists a singular orientation. With no real front or back, it’s conceived as a structure to be appreciated from all angles.
In Wānaka, this holiday home’s interior by Strutt Studios relies on a touch of Bauhaus and a lot of bravery for a refreshing and forward-thinking design.
Set among protected wetlands on the Kāpiti Coast, this rural home by Studio Pacific Architecture uses sculpture, environmental nous, and scale for a living environment that is full of heart.
It’s not often that dormer windows and brutalism are aligned in the same building, but this house on the Pauanui Waterways is not your usual combination of architectural ingredients.
A house hyper-focused on hygge and family gatherings comes together in Wānaka under the architectural direction of Eliška Lewis Architects.
Two simple pavilions have been stitched together with moments of wonder and era-specific influences in this house on the coast.
Sandwiched between a golf course and Mount Maunganui beach is a house that resonates with a cherished history, while firmly facing the future.
The full range of Aotearoa’s architectural talents are on display in the shortlist for the 2025 New Zealand Architecture Awards.
An Otago home by RTA Studio that manipulates linear plan and form to create a dynamic architectural expression.
A sculptural and immersive architectural response to the enduring presence of Rongokako.
Johnstone Callaghan Architects has designed a playful and daring home for an industry insider wanting to slow down and be surrounded by high levels of craftsmanship in entirely unexpected ways.
In a project in suburban Auckland, Crosson Architects looks backwards to create a bespoke house with a great sense of humour.
Scandinavian aesthetics meet antipodean views in a South Island home an architectural designer conceived for herself.
Until recently, this 1960s home sat squarely at the centre of a generous site in the Auckland suburb of St Heliers.
Modernist proportions and a dramatic cantilever work in tandem to lend gravitas and lightness to this Hawke’s Bay home by Daniel Marshall Architects.
An object of pure geometry in a vast mountainscape, this Otago home rejects distinctions between interior and exterior spaces.
The master plan of a dwelling comprising three separate buildings, originally conceived in the 1990s, has been completed by Sumich Chaplin Architects linking the three into an impressive lakeside home.
Designing for a site in the glowing headlands of Te Rae Kura, +MAP Architects envisaged a home that could be sailed like a ship — a place of manual interventions, and one in close dialogue with the area’s long and fascinating history.
An elevated beachfront site inspired Lloyd Hartley Architects to scoop up sand-like materials and craft a playful, cohesive house with impressive detailing and flexibility at its core.
On the edge of a working vineyard in Hawke’s Bay, this home for two returning Kiwis finds space for the arts while framing the vines and trees beyond.
A small annex to Sir Miles Warren’s RC Ballantyne House in Christchurch allowed Phil Redmond of PRau a chance to imagine a long-lost character from the iconic architect’s canon.
For years, architect Tim Daniel of Gel Architects and his partner Sarah James found themselves drawn, weekend after weekend, to the slower rhythm of Northland.
A lot can happen in a decade — or very little. It took almost 10 years to bring this family home to fruition, but it was well worth the wait.
Perched on a cliff in Auckland’s Herne Bay, an expansive retreat for gathering, sharing, and celebrating sought to be both bold and unassuming.
A Vernon Brown classic in the heart of Remuera has been refurbished to preserve a piece of architectural history, with the interiors designed by its owner and architect, Moshin Mussa of RTA Studio.
This contemporary family home presents as two cubes, seemingly tumbling down a sloping site before meeting a rock plinth at street level.
Mid-century with a modern interpretation, this family home just outside of Whangarei is a jewel-box on an expansive country site.
Sinuous and sculptural, the 2025 City Home of the Year makes the most of tight site in Mount Maunganui.
The 2025 Home of the Year overall winner, Bunker House by Chris Tate, blends sculpture and architecture in a daring addition to a very public site.
Named Small Home of the Year 2025, Kākā Pod by Rafe Maclean Architects is a sliver of whimsy and light-filled bliss in an unlikely corner of a suburban site in Wānaka.
Complexities that only a New Zealand topography can conjure; a dedication to treading lightly on the land, now and for years to come; and a setting deserving of such single-mindedness — these are the elements that combine to make real the vision that became Moonlight Tui Compound.
Designed as an urban oasis — a calming retreat from the pace of a busy life — this intricately detailed addition to a heritage villa has improved with the passage of time.
Each of these compact dwellings is designed to fit into the same space as the quintessential Kiwi double garage. They’re affordable, replicable models for a new housing typology.
A tenacious build process for an intensely complicated coastal site has pushed this house into uncharted territory.
Winner of the Home of the Year a decade ago, this house — for and by RTA’s founder Richard Naish and his family — continues to perform and amaze through a combination of clever architecture and planning.
Seizing the opportunity provided by an empty nest, the owners of this site at Bishops Hill near Matakana sought to create a cosy, relaxed lifestyle in a semi-rural setting with this well-placed, sheltered home near the river.
Several years in the making, this Ōakura home sits softly on its beachfront site, fortified against the elements and timelessly detailed.
Given a compact platform on a narrow strip of land, Grant Harris of HB Architecture has created this modern yet honest Northland holiday house that responds to its beachfront site.
It is not hard to understand why the owners of this property in the Northland settlement of Mangawhai decided to make their holiday bach a permanent situation.
When architect Matt Robinson and his wife Penny Thomson purchased their modest 75m² state house — once dismissed as a ‘shabby shocker’ — they saw beyond the catchphrase to the home’s solid bones and prime location on an enviable Westmere section, transforming it into something undeniably special.
This family home designed by Mason & Wales is an elegant, contemporary addition to the heart of Dunedin and was influenced by luxury yachting and its enviable context.