TVNZ’s new property series takes us inside some of the most luxurious homes in the South Pacific and asks: does a nice house make you feel better?
“Have you ever thought of your house as an experience?” Tom Webster asks in the opening moments of Coastal Wonders. The architect and host of Grand Designs NZ has spread his wings, transitioning from one show about expensive houses to another show about expensive houses – this time, it’s TVNZ’s new series about coastal properties. In Coastal Wonders, houses are “alive with possibility”, and Webster is keen to showcase how architecture and design can affect our health and wellbeing. He’s ready to ask the big questions, like could living in a fancy house by the sea actually be good for you?
Breaking news, mates: of course it is. If you’re lucky enough to live in an award-winning 1,000m2 mansion that also comes with a beachside bach at the bottom of the garden with a plunge pool connected to a natural spring – as we see in episode one – you’re probably going to feel pretty good about life. Coastal Wonders, however, will take six primetime hours to come to the same groundbreaking conclusion, as Webster travels from Aotearoa to Tahiti to Australia to explore a variety of ocean homes and discovers how he feels inside them.
Webster isn’t just going on vibes, though. After he wanders around these award-winning homes, he chucks some jazzy wiring (an EEG headset) onto his head to track his brain activity in different architectural spaces. How does he feel walking through an area with an incredible water view, compared to hanging out in an upper floor entertainment area? Science is wow, and this must be a dream gig for the always-amiable Webster, who strolls along beaches while saying things like “this isn’t just a coastline, it’s a living, breathing environment”, and moseys through enormous houses that have colonnades where the rest of us have dead houseplants.
There’s no doubt the properties in Coastal Wonders are spectacular, each built to connect to the environment around it in different ways. Episode one features the award-winning Pahoia House in Tauranga and a small boathouse on a private island in Tasmania, while in episode two, we meet a Californian who bought an island in Fiji, visit a beautiful beach house in Vanuatu and a cool, curved urban oasis in Australia. There’s an astonishing cliffside home covered in plants in Noosa, an off-grid curved Northland home, and a lush tropical garden that transforms a Tahitian home into an idyllic hideaway. All of the houses are clever, well-designed sanctuaries, with high ceilings and sympathetic acoustics and a shitload of indoor-outdoor flow.
No matter where he is in the South Pacific, Webster is eternally enthusiastic about good, creative design. “With exposure comes exhilaration,” he says at Pahoia House. “I feel completely immersed in the therapeutic textures, changing lights and rhythms of nature,” he gushes in Noosa. In Vanuatu, he chucks on his electrical headgear for some more astonishing revelations. “At the villa in Dream Cove, I was most captivated poolside,” he says.
Who wouldn’t be? While the houses in Coastal Wonders are architecturally different, most have one thing in common: they’re very, very expensive. This show is less Coastal Wonders and more How Rich People Live, and viewers will no doubt be drawn in by the opportunity for a rare glimpse inside these stunning properties. Much like New Zealand’s Best Houses with Phil Spencer, Coastal Wonders is escapist television – there’s no cost of living crisis here – and it’s another reminder that the era of entry-level, DIY-centric property shows is over (though the recent reboot of My House My Castle gave it a good try).
But despite all the creative luxury of the Coastal Wonder houses, it’s the natural environment that’s the star of this show. It’s the surrounding lush forest filled with birdsong that turns a Californian’s concrete bolthole into something special, or the gnarled pōhutukawa that frames the perfect sea view from the beach bach. It’s the isolation, the unimpeded views, the expanse of space that helps make these homes so remarkable. You don’t have to don a wiry brain-hat to know that proximity to nature improves our wellbeing, and while there’s nothing wrong with a bit of multimillion-dollar property porn, this will probably be the closest most of us will ever come to living in a home that doubles as “an experience”.
Coastal Wonders streams on TVNZ+ and screens on Sundays at 7.30pm on TVNZ1.
