Sixties renewal

Auckland-based fashion designer Kate Sylvester and her partner Wayne Conway chose New Zealand architect Belinda George to design the renovations to their 1960s Westmere home, remaining true to that decade’s form, combining new with old. “I wanted to create a house rather than a statement,” Sylvester says. “I didn’t just want a big modernist, minimalist white box and I didn’t want the house to be somewhere where the kids didn’t want to hang out.” To that end the brief was met as, explains Sylvester, she and Conway often have considerably more than their three children hanging out there, aided no doubt by the fact that the house has a large garden and jetty out to the water, where the kids can go fishing or kayaking. Kate Sylvester’s clothing brand has an established sustainability policy including a commitment to onshore production and an ever expanding stable of ethical and organic fabric options.