Since 2017, Restoration Man George Clarke has regularly visited New Zealand to feature our homes in his globally successful Amazing Spaces series. However, architecture isn't the only reason he continues to love coming to New Zealand.
While Aucklanders were enjoying the never-ending February sun, George Clarke was hard at work, filming his latest TV show, Homes in the Wild. The six-part documentary series is described as 'an epic journey to some of the hundreds of islands dotted around New Zealand's coastline to explore some of the countries' wildest homes.'
Despite his Sunderland accent, Clarke speaks with the pride of a Kiwi. He admires New Zealanders' passion for the environment, landscape, and nature, which he finds quite remarkable. It’s also what keeps bringing him back to our country.
Whether it's architecture, cars or New Zealand, the 50-year-old’s passion for what he does and where he does it is unrelenting.
"Passion. Yeah. Passion is the word. That enthusiasm comes from the passion,” he says. “First because I get a buzz about what I do. I love design. I'm an architect, but I'm also a designer; art, design, furniture. I've designed sofas and dining tables; I've designed all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
“Design, for me is a way of life, really. It's not a job; I eat, sleep and breathe it. So, when someone says we're going to make a TV series in New Zealand and talk about design and architecture, I'm going to rip their hands off [to do it]!"
New Zealand, though, has an added draw.
“I wasn't born here. I wasn't raised here. I came here for the first time to visit my uncle, who emigrated in the 1980s. But every time I get off the plane and walk out of that airport. I feel like I've come home.
“I remember so vividly stepping out of the airport and being immediately struck by how clean the air was: fresh, warm, unpolluted. New Zealanders don't do drama, they don't do stress – they choose not to worry about the small things to make time to enjoy life, and their lives are much the better for it.
“I wasn't born here. I wasn't raised here. I came here for the first time to visit my uncle, who emigrated in the 1980s. But every time I get off the plane and walk out of that airport. I feel like I've come home."
“I remember so vividly stepping out of the airport and being immediately struck by how clean the air was: fresh, warm, unpolluted. New Zealanders don't do drama, they don't do stress – they choose not to worry about the small things to make time to enjoy life, and their lives are much the better for it.
“When I returned to the UK, I made a point of knitting this into my everyday life, making myself slide into a Kiwi mindset whenever life gets too hectic, making time to go to places and wind down.”
While here during February, Clarke took a break from his hectic filming schedule on Great Barrier, Kawau and Rākino Islands to satisfy his other great design passion: cars.
He visited the architecture award-winning 119GNR, headquarters of Giltrap Group, where he was besotted by the new Aston Martin DB12. The high-performance twin-turbocharged GT makes for a marked contrast to the Polestar 4 he was driving for the remainder of his visit.
While the Polestar’s all-electric credentials fit perfectly with Clarke’s passion for sustainable building practices, he is also realistic about how we achieve net-zero.
“I'm driving a very green electric car, but you've got to be really honest about it: we're not all driving super, clean green cars. We're in a period of transition to get to net zero. So to me, we shouldn't give ourselves a massive hard time. It's like a green revolution in some ways that when the industrial revolution happened in the 1800s, it didn't just happen in a couple of years – it took a lot of time for that transition to happen.”
Without even taking a breath, Clarke checks himself on the irony of that analogy.
“That industrial revolution was what triggered climate change because we started mining and burning the coal to make steel; an intensive, dirty process. One hundred and fifty years later, we've gone 'Hang on! We need to do things differently’.”
In many ways, Clarke is a living embodiment of the transition, ending six generations of family tradition to study architecture.
“I would never have imagined that shift in a billion years. I was in Sunderland; I had a dream of becoming an architect. My granddad was a builder; they were all grafters up there. Everyone was. If you look at my family history, they all worked in the shipyards and then the coal mines, or they were builders. Even if I go back 150 years of my family history, they were carpenters, ropemakers, sheet-metal workers, miners. I've probably got the softest hands of all my family in the last 200 years because my family were proper grafters.”
A Concours condition Aston Martin DB6 steals his attention, and seeing him entranced by the classic, I ask which era of design is his favourite.
“Good traditional architecture is beautiful. Good modern architecture is beautiful. Bad traditional architecture is bad, and so it is with bad modern architecture. I think this is kind of naive from a design point of view. I can look at a beautiful classic car from the 1950s or ‘60s, and I can look at an ugly car from the 1950s and ‘60s; every designer makes mistakes.
“If you're going to ask me about my favourite piece of architecture at the minute, it's a Ponsonby house. You know, the old traditional Ponsonby-style houses? Beautiful. I've never met anyone who could look at one of those houses and say they don't like it. It's a bit like being in the UK; you won't find someone who doesn't think a Georgian house is beautiful.”
A couple of centuries and half a world away, Homes in the Wild couldn't be more removed from that era's stately classicism and manicured landscapes. Instead, it's about working with nature.
“I filmed on Rākino Island, where there's been a lot of restoration of the land. I saw pictures of what the island looked like 20 or 30 years ago, and there was nothing there, it was barren wasteland. Now it looks like an oasis with beautiful greenery and planting, with a piece of architecture built amongst it.
“There aren’t many places in the world that you can go to where landscapes have been restored, and nature has been restored to go on the other way. I think Kiwis are very good at that; sustainable design seems to be at the forefront. The thing with New Zealand is it's not just about the architecture; it's how the architecture has been inspired by the place.
“You got some very good architecture; you got some very good designers. And you've got beautiful landscapes. Everybody loves nature. Everyone seems fit and healthy to me. It must be the air and the gorgeous connection with nature that you've got here. And I think that feeds through the architecture.”
It's a powerful enough combo to keep drawing Clarke and his crew back to New Zealand.
Millions worldwide watch his passion for our unique architecture and homes through shows like Amazing Spaces and Homes in the Wild. Less than ‘home’ style, it's our lifestyle that has had the biggest impact on Clarke, who says it's time spent with New Zealanders that has changed his life for the better.
“I'll be forever grateful to New Zealand for teaching me this calmer, richer way of life – it’s another planet, indeed.”
George Clarke’s Homes in the Wild for Sky New Zealand Originals to air on Sky Open and Neon later in 2025 and on Channel 4 in the UK.