Pick up Ponsonby A house says a lot about the people who live in it. If one of that house’s inhabitants is also its architect, it says a whole lot more.

That’s the premise behind ‘Home Work: Leading New Zealand Architects’ Own Houses’, (random House - $75) the gorgeous new book (being launched in Auckland this evening) from John Walsh and Patrick Reynolds, the writer-photographer team behind ‘New New Zealand Houses’, the well-received survey of contemporary resident architecture, published in 2007.

“Architects spend their working lives answering to clients. This book explores what happens when they only have to answer to themselves,” says Walsh, whose own day job is editing ‘Architecture New Zealand’. “When they design their own homes architects have the opportunity to bring their experience together with their beliefs about what is really important in what they do.” “The result is often a highly individual journey, one that can go on for decades. In that case, a house becomes the built story of its architect.”

Walsh says the biographical aspect of ‘Home Work’, which features 20 residential projects and substantial interviews with their architects, is central to the book. “‘Home Work’ is not only about interesting buildings,” Walsh says. “It’s also about interesting lives. Patrick and I have both been covering architecture for years, and we think that many of New Zealand’s architects are significant figures in the country’s culture, and that they deserve more recognition than they’ve traditionally received.”

The homes chosen for the book had to have been designed by an architect for him or herself and, at the time the interviews for the book were conducted out, that architect had to have been still living in the home.