Once the headquarters for Wattyl paints, this robust 1967 building in Newton, Auckland, is now the studio for JKW – an interior architecture and design firm – where the team of seven certainly considers paint but so much more. “Often, interior design is pushed to the side as ‘fluff’– just the curtains and colours – but, if interiors are integrated with the architecture from very early on, how much better is that?” asks director and designer Janice Kumar-Ward. 

When Janice, her husband Julian and another couple bought the mixed-use building four years ago, it was an opportunity to showcase this in action. Original steel windows and doors were restored, asbestos floor tiles removed and a suspended ceiling, coated in yet more asbestos,  taken down to reveal a ribbed concrete subfloor.

Within this industrial shell, JKW has crafted an office, showroom and city crash pad for Janice who lives out of town. The block walls were freshened with Resene ‘Alabaster’ and Glimmerputz plaster, and diaphanous acoustic curtaining was used as partitioning to soften the aesthetic. Graphic artwork is dotted around, there are pendant lights and ferns in hanging baskets, and a boardroom table in an intimate setting feels more like a place to gather and dine. Much of the furniture was made by Julian and the space doubles as a showroom for the couple’s bespoke furniture and cabinetry business.

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This article first appeared in Interior magazine.

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