HERE’S PROJECTS: (PHOTO BY: SAM HARTNETT)
Worldwide pandemic. Massive shutdowns. Declining economy. Oh, yeah, and a magazine launch.
When Bauer Media shuttered its New Zealand architecture title HOME in April due to the pandemic, editor Simon Farrell-Green found himself reeling.
“Bauer was a second family – I think a lot of people feel that way,” he writes in The Spinoff.
“I have a young family, and we’d just bought a new house – we moved on day two of level three. I spent a few weeks grieving, brooding, and talking non-stop on the phone – to colleagues, to architects, to contributors, and the loyal clients who supported the magazine through thick and thin,” he continues.
Eventually, Farrell-Green realized that even if the title had gone away, the community around that brand remained, and they deserve a magazine.
“The result of that thinking is a new magazine,” he writes. It’s called Here,” he notes, explaining the nod to a previous magazine site he worked called Eat Here Now.
“Here is fiercely dedicated to local New Zealand architecture, specifically its houses, but it’s also about books and art and community and independent business and beautifully designed things you might want to have in your house,” he writes. “It’s about small being beautiful, and things that last and it’s about being thoughtful and careful rather than wasteful and showy. It’s about design rather than budget, whether that’s a lot or a little. It’s about here – New Zealand, this odd little place we live in and always, always underestimate.”
The magazine is being produced in his front room, and is expected to launch on June 22. With grit, determination and a little help from a crowd-sourcing campaign (which has already raised 62% over their initial goal), Here will soon be here for the New Zealand family left homeless by Bauer’s surprise closing in that country.
We wish them boatloads of luck on their launch. From the previews of the upcoming issue, this looks like a stunning magazine.