Akiko Kurematsu
An Ongoing Conversation
For more than twelve years, Katie Lockhart Studio has worked across residential and commercial projects throughout New Zealand and abroad. The text below discusses Lockhart’s original approach and process, with rare glimpses in to her creativity and spirit. Told to and edited by Akiko Kurematsu.
I am always searching for a feeling of freshness.
When we were young, my parents collected pre-1900s New Zealand colonial furniture. We used to spend Saturdays trawling antique stores; we’d go to (the now permanently closed) Auburn Antiques in Auckland, which was around the back of all the other stores and was filled with amazing things.
One day, they purchased a beautiful curved-fronted, double-height library unit with glass doors up the top and solid doors down the bottom. It was huge, and just about covered the entire wall in our living room. Dad fitted our television into the cabinet doors at the bottom. I loved that our TV was hidden away in that gorgeous piece, whereas in most living rooms that I visited, the TV was the altar. Not us. I loved watching the process in which Dad would restore these pieces in his workshop, for us to live with them.
We travelled often because of my father’s job. He used to have short placements in interesting places, which took us out of our comfort zone and opened our eyes to so much more. The most profound trip was when I was fifteen, to Warsaw in Poland. I think it was the first time my brother Jared and I traveled outside of Asia Pacific, to Europe. Dad was living in a hotel in the Kings Palace Gardens, and the parks around the hotel held outdoor classical music concerts during the day. It was a truly different way of living; we felt miles away from our upbringing in every way.
I am always hunting. It’s what I do… all day, everyday.
Straight from university and design school, I worked for Karen Walker as her design assistant. Karen and her husband Mikhail had a huge impact on me. They lived in a little concrete Art Deco house on a hill in the middle of nowhere with an infinity pool hidden amongst the trees, where we watched films projected on bed sheets by the open fire. It was a romantic way to live.
Karen and Mikhail were inspired by Casa Vogue, a biannual interiors supplement that came with Vogue Italia. The introduction to this magazine changed the way I perceived interiors, and compilations of furniture. It was the reason I wanted to move to Milan: I wanted to work alongside those that created and curated these interior dreams, I wanted to learn from those who I considered to be the best, to understand what they were seeing, to know all that they did about furniture, designers, and style.
So I left New Zealand, to live in Milan. I consider the time I spent working in Italy as my true design education. The editor of Casa Da Abitare at the time showed me around her newly renovated house. She had a yoga room with tatami mats. I had never seen anything like this. I loved how Italians could dream up realities.
I travel frequently still, for both work and pleasure. It fuels me. Just recently, we went to Melbourne for the day to meet with a furniture dealer that I had never met before. It was a long day of early flights and a late one home. But the time spent with this dealer, seeing his collections, how he had arranged them in his spaces, and talking to him about Josef Hoffmann and 1960’s Italian furniture, has a lasting effect. These meetings open up possibilities in my mind for our clients.
My curiosity in the older guard of dealers – furniture, crafts, folk objects – leads me to seek out these personalities. I joke that that I know every grumpy old man in Auckland and beyond – eccentric dealers, their homes, the way they work. I love working with these dealers, supporting their interests, and developing my understanding of their niche areas.
This is what I love, and how I hunt for the right pieces for the right puzzles. Hunting is a very intuitive process for me and now, I drag my family around looking at things… just like my folks did to us.
I want to unravel things that interest me, to understand what it is at the core of these interesting things.
I have always collected colours, and scraps of flaking paint. Whenever we travel to New York or to the Pacific Islands, I am always collecting colored chips of paint from sun-faded buildings, and bringing these colours into my work here. Colour combinations that I like from old Prada campaigns, paint charts that I ask friends to send me from overseas.
Often, I’ll spot a little bit of something in a book, a magazine, or on an Instagram post and follow that lead. I enjoy unravelling these leads. I love researching, finding new designers, makers, understanding a past style of furniture-making or a style of furniture particular to a region.
We have files of colours we like. I like to play with them in combinations and leave them out to look at, consider how they look at different times of day, and in combinations with other materials. I’ve noticed how the light in different countries affects colours; because of the strong daylight in New Zealand, I prefer using slightly dustier colours here to help take the edge off.
I am always thinking about better ways to organise my references but I have a file on my desktop that I dump everything into – it’s a mess and I like it like that. I have tried filing things into categories but I now understand that various unplanned combinations spark fresh ideas.
I am always colliding the modern, familiar, and authentic in our work.
Our current house was built as a farmhouse in the early 60’s, a split-level mid-century farmhouse with some Japanese influences. We purchased it off the original owners who built it. It had been a well-loved family home and needed us to restore and re-energise it. Slowly, we have found our own spirit within the house, understanding how we inhabit the various spaces and collecting furniture on travels that has defined the aesthetic of our interior. Our studio has used the bathrooms and kitchen as a ground for experimenting.
The kitchen, in particular, is a mash up of Japanese and Italian references. The tiled checker board floor – although bold, is also familiar – like a kitchen floor in an Italian country house, with a traditional Japanese cabinetry we had made in Japan. But bringing these elements together along with cult Italian designs by Vico Magistretti and Achille Castiglioni felt both fresh and familiar to me. Homely yet unexpected, crafted but robust.
Handmade and mass-produced, analogue and highly technical… I love combinations of all of these and their tactile juxtapositions. It’s all about choosing the right combination of elements for who will live in this space and how they intend to use it. I work hard to generate soulfulness and simplicity – a feeling you get from a space that you feel really good in. At first you may engage with what’s in the space but once you have been through that process, you notice that there is a good energy to the space. It’s much more than just a collection of inanimate objects.
Like the interior of a marae in Mahia built in the 1950’s, or the tiled bathrooms of Villa Borsani in Milan built in the early 1940’s, in both, there is a sense of longevity and intent: to house their families well.
I was told many years by my editor in Milan, that a house is never finished. Our house feels good to us, I guess that’s what I mean by soulfulness, it adds something to our day.
I craft each and every project.
I suggested architect Bijoy Jain for a hotel project, and the client flew us both to Bali. It was a true meeting of minds, a mutual appreciation of craft and simplicity. The project did not go ahead but Bijoy asked me to collaborate on a project – private residences that he was working on in India. It was a wonderful experience that fundamentally changed my practice – to take more time, to experiment throughout the process, to craft our projects.
Whether the project is commercial or residential – homes, galleries and exhibitions, retail spaces, restaurants, bars, hotels – our studio stays nimble as each project is approached differently.
We may work alongside an architect within their vision, creating a home within the house through colours, finishes, furniture selection, and detailing of cabinetry. On projects that don’t require an architect, spatial design, consent processing, detailing of bathrooms, cabinetry and everything in between falls on my team.
There is a sense of proportion to the pieces we create, which comes from years of observing furniture. We spend time drawing out these ideas, but the measurements and details often change when we begin developing the design in production with our makers. We never imagine that everything is figured out in our heads. They always bring dimension to our thoughts from their experience of life – observing and making. We work closely with cabinet makers and furniture makers, from one man bands to big commercial shop-fitters. We continue to resolve our design in the process of making. The pieces evolve as they pass through the various stages of making whether in wood, concrete or a tiled space. For us, it’s important to be involved throughout these stages.
I also see the relationships we have with our clients as a collaboration. We see it as our job to take them through the creative process where we attempt to understand how they live, or how they dream to live in their spaces.
All this searching, hunting, unraveling and colliding is an expression of my curiosity; the idea that spaces, buildings, and interiors hold history, stories, and personalities. And if I can learn from it and define it; I can honor it, fall in love with it, reflect it in my craft.