Design Lives Here

That’s the brief for Design Lives Here, Objectspace's annual design event with Here Magazine, presented by Cemac Commercial Interiors.

We're bringing together four design-lovers to speak with heart about a treasured object they own, and something they're coveting.

Your 2026 speakers are:

• Heath Lowe – Executive Design Director and a founding partner of Special New Zealand
• Jessie Wong – The eponymous founder and owner of leather goods label Yu Mei
• Dajiang (DJ) Tai 台大江 – Director of Cheshire Architects
• Rebecca Smidt – Restaurateur behind the multi-award winnings Cazador, the Cazador deli next door and San Ray

Here Magazine’s Simon Farrell-Green will host this dynamic evening centred around design, collecting, and discovery.

Countdown is on! Get your tickets now.

$40 per head which includes:

Natural wine from Black Estate and Bryterlater, beers from Liberty Brewing, sparkling bevs from Almighty and Goodsh•t Soda AND the lauded return of Cazadogs from Cazador. PLUS a mystery cocktail...

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Meet your speakers:

Heath Lowe is Executive Design Director and a founding partner of Special New Zealand. Hailing from America’s Midwest, his career began in the US and Europe working alongside ambitious big-name brands (think Nike). Moving to Aotearoa in 2006, Heath and his creative partner and wife Clare Buchanan opened a furniture store that imported vintage modern European pieces. What was meant to be a break from commercial design work wasn't, instead sharpening Heath’s interest in cross-disciplinary design thinking. A couple of years later, that curiosity turned into Special: a new breed of creative company traversing design, advertising, digital and strategy. In his eighteen years behind the wheel of Special’s design business, Heath’s teams have been behind the award-winning work that has helped to position New Zealand brands (think ecostore) among the best in the world. Like most wildly talented people that we’d like to be when we grow up, Heath says he’s ‘still figuring it out.’

Jessie Wong is the eponymous founder and owner of Yu Mei, a leather goods label with a focus on utility and regeneration. She founded Yu Mei in 2015 in Dunedin, when she couldn’t find a design-conscious bag that fitted everything she needed for a day. With a permanent design studio and two flagship stores in Aotearoa, Yu Mei is now expanding into international territories, recently hosting a two month residency in Paddington, Sydney. Jessie is intent on championing regenerative design practices, with integrity at the core of Yu Mei’s supply chain. The materials used by Yu Mei are traceable down to farm level, and they are proud to be certified Toitu Carbon Net Zero. Jessie describes one of her hobbies as ‘planning out the next two or three years for Yu Mei’, so it’s no wonder she won the 2021 Woman of Influence Award for Business Enterprise.

Director of Cheshire Architects and once a student of Pip Cheshire’s, Dajiang (DJ) Tai 台大江 joined the studio after graduating in 2008. Since then, he has worked alongside Pip and Nat Cheshire on some of Aotearoa’s most significant urban projects, including Britomart and City Works Depot, while also leading projects ranging from major commercial buildings to remote craft cabins and regeneration in Te Waipounamu. Born in China and based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, DJ brings a perspective shaped by both Eastern and Western cultural traditions. Alongside his work in Aotearoa, he has led retail projects in China and hotel project in Taiwan, maintaining an ongoing connection to the places and cultural landscapes. DJ maintains the practice of drawing and watercolouing, with works recently exhibited in Rendered Futures. His projects have received multiple Best Design Awards Gold Pins from the Designers Institute of New Zealand, alongside the nation’s highest architectural honour, the Sir Miles Warren Award.

Rebecca Smidt owns and runs multi-award winning restaurant Cazador, the Cazador deli next door, and San Ray on Ponsonby Road. Becs waited tables at Cazador while at the University of Auckland, where she graduated with an honours in Art History and Italian Studies. She moved to Italy to ‘chase dreams and Chianti’, living in Milan and Greece before settling in London, where she studied at the London School of Marketing and worked at Space Syntax, a spatial planning consultancy spin out from The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. She worked (and ate) at restaurants along the way, between a series of character-building redundancies. Becs returned to our shores via seven months in New York City, to work with Dariush and the Lolaiy family, shaping Cazador for its second generation in hospitality. She’s done a lot since, including co-authoring Cazador: Game, Offal… and the Rest – a multi-award-winning cookbook. Becs enjoys reading Champagne labels, and above all, her beautiful, big, chaotic family.

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