James Fenton Architect

Bath House

Completed 2018

Photographed by Paul McCredie

Audiobox

Completed 2016

Photographed by Paul McCredie

The Hut

Completed 2017

Photographed by Paul McCredie

The Hut sits slightly below an original brick and weatherboard house under a great nine-pronged pohutukawa tree. Intended for use as a billiard room and studio, the concept for the structure was to recreate a sense of being under this tree.

To accommodate these two disparate uses, public and private, the plan of the building tapers from west to east. The tall, narrow east-end studio looks out to Matiu Somes, while the flat, broad billiard room to the west faces inland. A pool of water alongside the west-end reflects light up into the space, coloured in dark green tones throughout.

The service spaces – bathroom, cellar, kitchen, garden shed – are made of brick (outside and in) to feel like the remnants of old brick walls that pattern the site.

Grafton

Completed 2010

Photographed by Paul McCredie

ILK

Completed 2022

James Fenton Architect Studio

Completed 2012

Photographed by Patrick Reynolds

Winner of an NZIA Wellington Architecture Award 2012

Some buildings are blessed with a happy disposition, and this is one of those cherry types. It makes pedestrians pause on the footpath, its architect says, and stop for a chat. No doubt it helps that James Fenton is a sociable sort, but what is it about this little building, a two-level-studio-plus-garage, that is so engaging?

For a start, it is, as architects like to say, resolved. That is, there are no awkward proportions, or clumsy details, or incompatible materials or colours. It’s confident and forthright ‒ it meets the street, but doesn’t bully the neighbours ‒ and is quite gregarious in a matter-of-fact kind way. The studio shines like a lantern at night, and the garage door opens to reveal a stuffed space which makes room for two items that every garage ideally should house: a dart board and an old red sports car. While the building is definitive in its positioning, it is also generous in its siting. The wide concrete stairs running up the side of the building may not be there for posterity, but they’re certainly there, some passers-by seem to think, posteriors.

There’s another factor in the building’s appeal. You can’t deny the attraction of a well-turned gable. As far as our domestic architecture goes, there’s something Platonic about this form; it seems to exist as a cartoon in our consciousness, so that if you ask a child to draw a house it’s most likely to be drawn with a pointy hat. The gable on this building was requested by the architect’s wife, and surely it’s no coincidence that she is an art historian, but there’s also no end of inspiration in the neighbourhood. It’s isosceles city, up in Northland. Once you start to look, you see gable roofs everywhere: on the family’s house behind the studio, on the Anglican church next door, on the houses up and down the hills, and even, amusingly, on the public toilet across the road, a building so diminutive that if any vice were to be pursued within its walls it could only be solitary in nature.

Just as the building’s exterior expresses a nice reworking of a familiar form, so it’s interior realises a commonly held ambition. Who hasn’t dreamed of a safe haven away from family life’s importunate demands? ‘I’ve always wanted to have a studio,’ Fenton says, and by that he means his own place and, after decades working with other partners, his own practice. In his studio, with its kitchen and shower neatly tucked in the rear, we’re in the territory of the shed or man-cave or, as the architect says, pointing to the framed print of an old Burton Brothers’ photograph of a raupo hut, the encampment. There’s nothing extemporary about the studio, though; calm and centred in the midst of Northland’s bewildering and disorienting topography, it’s a lovely space in which to work and think.

– John Walsh in Big House Small House: New homes by New Zealand Architects

Wakefield St. Apartments

Completed 2001

Apartments above a historic warehouse in the Courtenay Precinct, Wellington.

“The apartments stand strong on a highly visible street corner like high-profile ambassadors of the promise of higher-density living.” — Jeremy Hansen, Home Magazine

'Density done well: Wellington’s Wakefield apartments', Home Magazine, 2016

'Rising Above it All', Dwell, January 2009

Cover, New Zealand Architecture, Jan/Feb 2002

Photos 1 & 3: Paul McCredie, others by Patrick Reynolds

NZ Funds

Completed 2016

Photographed by JFA

Winner of an NZIA Wellington Architecture Award (Interior Architecture), 2016

Citation: ‘A cleverly limited material palette and exquisite detailing achieves the client’s space requirements in a very elegant way. The L-shaped space is defined by a central colonnade, the organisational backbone of the space, and the ‘New York loft’ aesthetic is helped along its way through spectacular pivoting doors, which also act as space dividers. The theme here is: anything touching the ground is timber or black; anything “from above” is white. The design exudes both grace and – through the client’s collection of contemporary photography – good humour.’

NZ Funds Private Wealth Fitout:

NZ Funds Private Wealth provides financial advice and portfolio management to New Zealand individuals, families and trusts. The introduction of Kiwisaver has led to an expanded client base and a desire to ensure their fitout reflects a broader spectrum of clientele. We were briefed to provide a variety of meeting spaces, from casual to boardroom.

The architectural concept was for a clean and simple fitout with a consistent colour palette, selected to reflect our client’s branding and to sit comfortably within the Old Police Station building. The idea of a New York loft fitted well within the heritage building and was easily communicated to a remote head office and board of directors.

Located within Wellington’s CBD, the L-shaped space is defined by a central colonnade that acts as a strong backbone and clearly defines the arrangement of rooms. The L-shaped space accommodates the brief for an informal meeting/kitchen setting adjoining the entry doors. These doors can be observed from the first office desk, avoiding the need for a satellite reception desk.

The meeting rooms naturally arrange themselves either side of the lobby colonnade behind a series of clear-glazed, black steel pivoting doors that provide a dramatic and semi-acoustic spatial definition. Visual separation was initially allowed for within the fenestration but was not necessary as the client gained confidence with the spatial arrangement during construction.

Furniture materials and colours reflect a simple idea that anything touching the ground is timber or black and things “from above” are white. Presentation screens and space subdividing cupboards are clad in Fijian kauri veneer to provide a link to the timber floor and a sense of solid old world values associated with wealth management, whilst the contemporary photography throughout provides a connection with the edgy and local.