A house is as much a reflection of what is inside its walls as it is a reflection of what’s just outside. Conveniently located behind the Dominion Road shops, this week’s Your Place residency ‘Dumplings’ is basically wall-to-wall with Auckland’s best Asian cuisine, with the smell of fresh dumplings lingering around from 5pm onwards. This […]
Your Place | Dumplings
A house is as much a reflection of what is inside its walls as it is a reflection of what’s just outside. Conveniently located behind the Dominion Road shops, this week’s Your Place residency ‘Dumplings’ is basically wall-to-wall with Auckland’s best Asian cuisine, with the smell of fresh dumplings lingering around from 5pm onwards.
This grand old beauty is perfectly nestled between three buildings and a grassy school field. A sun-drenched concrete section hugs the parameters of the house with green bushes clinging to the railings, growing and creeping in mysterious directions. The house plays host to a floral mural, perhaps imitating the potential or past gardens that could have been. Today, ‘Dumplings’ is home to Charlotte and Kenneth, who are both local artists.
The entranceway is the first place where the home gets to show off its true character; neat diamond-shaped windows, a foyer-dedicated couch, a really well shaped plant, a retro cabinet and two very contrasting artworks – one of which is by Charlotte herself. The kitchen is small but supreme, boasting a cool tiled section which we presume once housed a coal fire and an extremely adorable built-in over-slot. This is the place you “sit, have a cuppa and a chat”, equipped with a tiny window above the sink that looks out over the washing line and pours in pockets of light. Lovely.
‘Dumplings’ proudly combines a huge variety of textures; the floor looks as though it is made from squares cut out from the galaxy, laying side-by-side until they nuzzle up against fuzzy carpets, and the combination of a patterned vinyl table top and buttered-coloured walls is rather delicious. A grand staircase leads you up past a bathroom with dashes of eggshell-green glass and some pretty hanging greenery. There’s a dreamy bath situation going on too… Who even has the time to bath these days? SO Luxury.
However, the ‘dumpling dream’ is realised on the little veranda. Scattered with pot plants and housing the perfect afternoon seat where the sun is never too shy to show its face – it’s the ideal weekend spot to share bowls of the street’s best takeaway dumplings.
See more of Dumplings, photographed by Ophelia King [here]
