In a Waterview duplex, Atelier Jones makes the case that half a house can carry the full thinking.
When the mid-afternoon harbour light hits a full-height wall of aged brass cabinetry, it breaks back across the kitchen. Raimana Jones of Atelier Jones placed the brass on the wall opposite the room’s northwest-facing window for exactly that reason. It’s the move the rest of the renovation hinges on.
A young couple had owned the duplex only a few months when they began thinking about a renovation. It had already been worked over once, in the way developers tend to: open plan, perimeter storage, an L-shaped kitchen with a hob too close to the window to meet code, a laundry boxed into the middle of the room.
What brought them to Raimana was a kitchen he’d designed in Titirangi. They liked the mid-century register of his work, without wanting a copy. What they did want, they could put into five words: quirky, fun, bold, comfortable, charming. “That’s the thing with words,” says Raimana. “They contain so much. Designers are a bit like detectives. The beginning is choosing the relevant clues.”
The clues led to art deco. Two original bungalow-style internal doors with recessed pockets, left over from an earlier era, were the cue: they suggested a starting point that valued craft and well-made things. From there the rest of the palette was assembled in walnut, marble, brass and terracotta, each material picked for what it does next to the one before it, and for how the room would catch and hold the light.
Working with Mathilde Polmard on the concept, the team sketched two layouts. One closed the kitchen off in a U-shape. The other did the reverse: it shifted the kitchen to where the old laundry had been, opened up a central island for prep and built in a bench seat against the window where the original kitchen once was. The clients took the second option. The kitchen now sits at the centre of the space rather than at its edges, the way a restaurant is arranged around the action. “Hosting mattered to the owners,” says Raimana. “They wanted to be in conversation with guests while they cooked.” The bench seat has come to do more than the brief planned for. Storage below, seating above, it’s where the couple, who both work from home, spend a lot of the day.
A kōwhai motif runs through the joinery and the stained-glass panel, but Raimana didn’t draw it for this project. He’d sketched it for a Kingsland bungalow renovation that didn’t make it past concept, and held onto it for a project where it might land. “I had this design that reflected some of the keywords they gave me,” he says. “They loved it.” It echoes Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Scotland, where the Glasgow architect ran a single rose motif through curtains, joinery and stained-glass cabinetry. Raimana’s kōwhai works the same way: repeated in different materials, tying the rooms together without announcing itself.
Renovations of this depth used to be reserved for stand-alone houses on their own sections. They’re now arriving in duplexes, apartments and terraces — increasingly homes shaped by those who live there, not the resale market. This kitchen takes that further: rather than extending the footprint, it specifies every millimetre of it. Every move earns its keep. “You can achieve a sense of luxury and belonging through a modest footprint,” says Raimana. “It sits in the joinery, the stained glass, the tilework, the cabinetry. The depth comes from working with makers, and carrying a story across materials.”
Raimana has already heard the hopes and dreams for stage two. The kōwhai will reappear in the slats of a new front entrance. One day, it might branch upstairs into a third bedroom.
Words Alice Lines
Photography David Straight
The post The Atelier Jones kitchen with a kōwhai in tile and stained glass appeared first on Homestyle.
