$ 110
$ 110
Ask any architecture aficionado about their Trade Me saved searches, and this will be one: Mary Gaudin and Matthew Arnold’s celebration of modernist houses in Aotearoa is now 10 years old, and the first edition sold out almost immediately. Now, they’ve released a second edition, all 336 pages of it.
The houses are wonderful, the writing is thoughtful and the photographs are terrific, but what makes the book special is the way they’re captured – as real houses, lived in over decades, evolving and changing as their inhabitants do. Gardens grow and timber darkens; layers of collections add richness and life. “Architectural photography likes to portray perfection but these houses are not brand new, they’re old and lived in,” writes Arnold. “But they’re perfect in the minds of the people who live in them because of what they represent, which when designed, was a better way of living.”