George's big whare find

British TV architect George Clarke discovers some revolutionary NZ designs in his new series, Homes in the Wild.

- BY RUSSELL BROWN

There is something lovely about the first house George Clarke visits in Homes in the Wild - not just what it is, but what it isn't. Which is to say, it's something other than an elegant modernist shed.

The tented house - a striking tensile fabric structure designed by Greg Noble, an architect better known for neoclassical homes in leafy suburbs - looks out to the Pacific from the far side of Aotea Great Barrier Island. It's a rugged place to be.

"It's one of the most unusual houses I've filmed anywhere, never mind just in New Zealand," says Clarke on a Zoom call from a bland Manchester hotel room.

"I think it was quite a revolutionary piece of architecture. It also had to withstand the elements. Particularly somewhere like Great Barrier, which can get battered by some terrible weather coming in on that coastline. Building a canvas tensile structure in that location was a pretty brave thing to do."

In the first episode of Homes in the Wild, Simon, the owner, is unruffled when Clarke suggests it must be scary inside in a storm. "It's fun," he shrugs. "We have plenty of board games."

It's a good setup for the themes of the series, which sees the Amazing Spaces host visit Great Barrier, Rākino and Kawau islands in the Hauraki Gulf, the Marlborough Sounds and Australia's Lord Howe and Bruny Islands in search of homes that respond to remote environments. But "remote", he agrees, is a relative term. Whereas Lord Howe is a volcanic remnant 600km out in the Tasman, the Gulf islands are on Auckland's doorstep.