Tauranga-based arts and culture advocate Sonya Korohina (Ngāti Porou, Whānau ā Hunāra) is the driving force behind Supercut Projects, which gives tautoko to creative communities and audiences in Aotearoa. She used to drive past the 1960s built modernist home as a child and dream of living in it. Now, with husband and Stuff journalist Tony Wall, and their daughter Alafair, she does.

SONYA KOROHINA: I’d always loved this particular house, just because of its modernist lines.

When this house came on the market, we were very fortunate. It was just after we came out of our first lockdown, there weren’t many people looking for new homes – we were all too busy freaking out about what was happening with the world – so we were able to secure it.

The family who owned it had lived here for 50 years. Everything was cream, peach and florals – there was even carpet in the bathroom – but it was in immaculate condition.

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It was a case of tearing up a carpet, getting rid of all the chintzy curtains, polishing the concrete, polishing the wooden floors, painting everything white and honouring the natural materials of the house, letting them shine. It’s got these beautiful macrocarpa ceilings and native timber floors.

For me, modernist buildings just have such considered design. When you’re sitting in the balconies off the lounge and our main bedroom, it can be a miserable old day, but because you’ve got the roof above you and the outer walls alongside of you, you’re cocooned. You can really enjoy the natural environment.

It’s got really generous proportions, those beautiful ceilings, the floor to ceiling windows.

The stained-glass panels were little flourishes left by the last owners, who was a joiner. He would spend time in his workshop creating beautiful screens and doors of coloured glass.

There are some with red stained-glass downstairs and the front door has green stained-glass. It’s not in keeping with the architecture of the house, but it gives it character.

At Supercuts, I’m working with artist Sara Hughes, who’s creating a work called Midnight Sun, over 260 square metres of absolute colourful visual delight [that will run through Tauranga as a street awning]. The artwork in the kitchen that’s all yellows and limes is one of her works, called Willow Street.

The round Perspex work in the stairwell is by an artist called Karyn Taylor. It looks like a light box, but it’s actually how she’s designed it. She’s really interested in taking physics concepts and interpreting them as artworks.

I belong to an art buying group called Toi Ataata (visual arts). We’ve been together for two years, there’s eight of us.

We put money into an account annually, then we buy artworks and rotate them every six months around each other’s houses. It’s a way for us to build an art collection and learn about contemporary New Zealand art practice. We buy a lot of early career artists, and we limit ourselves to New Zealand artists. After 10 years we auction the works off.

It’s quite freeing. When you’re going to be living with a work permanently, you’re maybe more considerate of your husband or wife’s tastes. But we’ve all been quite adventurous with a number of the works that we buy.

As you come down the stairs there’s a piece by and artist called Hannah Ireland, that’s one of the works that’s in our art buying group collection. Some people find it quite challenging.

The piece in the entrance way belonged to my mother, who’s since passed, so it’s a favourite. It’s a pressed paper work that is hundreds of squares, and once you get up close, you can see each of the squares has been pressed around a form, so they have ridges.

With this house, we’ve kind of taken our cues from the house and the environment. We’re surrounded by amazing gardens and trees. I didn’t want the interior to compete with that.

Both Tony and I work from home, so we really want our home to be a place of refuge – nurturing, but also really restful. The world’s just so busy right now, so I wanted to create moments within the house that could restore you. There’s colour, but there are also moments of peacefulness as well.

Midnight Sun launches in Tauranga on June 21.