House Style with Amy Yalland
After showing us around her converted industrial home and studio she shares with her partner, Jonty, and daughter, Juniper, in Auckland, graphic designer Amy Yalland shares her house style.
You’re happiest at home when…
When we’re relaxing in front of the fire, chatting about our projects at the end of the day.
Our toddler is usually running around and bringing us books to read her, and maybe we’ll have a wine to bookmark the day. I love the smell of the wood when we light it. The fire heats the whole warehouse, so it was an essential investment for our live/work space, installed a year after moving in.
How would you describe the interiors of your house?
Industrial, functional, artisanal.
The space imposed its own aesthetic, so
we’ve always designed within that. We’ve just tidied it all up, fixing holes,
painting walls white; the basics. Bringing in cabinetry has brought another
element as the units take up so much visual space aside from physical space, a
solidity. Handmade objects and prints we’ve made sit within it all.
If you could only save one thing, what would it be?
Our books.
There would be too many to save probably,
since our collection of design, art and literature publications is quite large
and heavy, but it would be worth it for their historical and sentimental value.
What was the last thing you bought for the house?
Colourful striped nylon bags from India.
I got some from my friend Hannah Broatch who runs Hatch Workshop; a design and building project who do social responsibility initiatives in India who are currently looking at plastic’s effect on the environment. Juniper loves to steal them to stow her treasures in. I use them for groceries and hiding clothes we need to repair!
Top three coffee table books?
Figures of Speech, Falke Pisano
I admire the graphic use of linework in this book and the performance sketches interest me on a conceptual level. I’ve come back to this a good few times over the years as a reference book for our studio.
Umool Umool Vol. 9: The rejected, the recycled, the regenerated
A beautifully bound risograph printed book by with a cover by Karel Martens and sections by designers including Na Kim, James Goggin and Hyo Kwon.
High Tech, Joan Kron and Suzanne Slesin
My mum gave my dad this book 30 years ago when they were doing up houses together – he loved the industrial style. A big book, very of its time now but I love it, with black and white images of 1980s interiors amongst the colour. Dad gave it to us when we bought our warehouse as an inspiration for us.
If money was no object, what changes would you make?
Paint the concrete floor a colour!
It’s a maze of floor plans and has old oil
marks and making it a clean surface would make me so happy and bring the focus
to the things we have in it rather than the floor patina. Jonty would get the
roof lined so the space was better insulated. And both of us would love to go
buy some art together to fill the wall, and support our artist friends!
You’re having people over for dinner: what do you cook?
We’d make a slow cooked tagine in a dish handmade by Jonty’s mum, Jan.
It’s an easy option when you’re busy with
a toddler and it’s delicious and feeds a few. And it goes well with mostly
everything! Jan makes wonderful terracotta cookware in Christchurch and we
are lucky enough to own quite a few pieces she’s made.
What does a Sunday here look like?
Sundays are for cooking, playing and working on Index, our design studio.
Since Jonty has a teaching job and I look
after Juniper during the week, a lot of our projects happen on the weekend when
we are all here. It’s just a phase, while June is so little, and I’m lucky to
have some great projects on a slow burn that I can work on: two book projects,
some risograph printing and an identity design job.
What are the best things about the neighbourhood?
The cycle path that leads to the green spaces around us.
Almost every day we walk or ride along
them to the park, there is nothing more calming than being small under an
avenue of tall trees, and so quickly away from suburbia.
How long will you be here for?
For as long as it suits us, as a creative studio and a family.
We’re taking it as it comes. When Juniper
gets bigger potentially the area may prove to be too industrial, but for now
she gets excited by the next-door vans and having a massive space to push her
toys around in.
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