Looking Sharp

Otago Daily Times

18-07-2025

A Dunedin couple tell Kim Dungey how they overcame the odds to create one of the city's most unique homes.
Covid lockdowns, a tricky triangular site and an old building with lots of unknowns — the road to this dream home was anything but smooth. But the ambitious project has resulted in a former corner store on one of Dunedin's busiest feeder routes being given a new lease of life. During World War 2, the single-storey shop — built to the boundary on both its street frontages — was operated by a Miss E.A. Sector. Later, it became a quirky flat with a bedroom right next to the footpath at the intersection of Royal Tce and Heriot Row.
When they first saw the building advertised in 2013, the current owners fell in love with its angular shape and clinker brick cladding.
Caroline Terpstra says she and husband Geoff were living in Maori Hill but were ready for a new challenge and a property that required less maintenance. Adding to the appeal: they had just returned from Europe, where they enjoyed staying in central city apartments and "being part of the action".
When the building went on the market, the pair requested information but heard nothing back. Later, they sent a letter to the new owner and in 2017, they got a call "out of the blue" in which he explained his circumstances had changed and he was selling up.
To make the project work financially, the couple needed to keep the ground floor as a rental.
The initial plan was to add two levels above the shop but this proved too expensive so instead, they bought the neighbouring property in Heriot Row. This allowed them to build across the existing garage at the back of the former shop, limiting the development to one additional level and making the project affordable. It also gave them valuable set-down space for materials during construction.
Their offer on the neighbouring property was accepted just as New Zealand entered its first Covid lockdown — a "stressful" time because they didn't know if the University of Otago would remain open and if the flat's existing student tenants would stay.
Problems finding a builder delayed the start of the project, which meant that after selling their house, they had to spend two and-a-half years renting.
Add in several other curve balls — including escalating building costs and material shortages — and it was the "perfect negative storm".
Mr Terpstra, an architectural designer who drew up plans for the project, says the aim was to respect the heritage architecture while clearly demarcating between old and new so the history of the site could be easily read.
At ground level, they kept all but one of the shop's window and door openings. Above this, the materials are clearly different but the dark metal cladding was designed to tie into the iron oxide colouring of the original bricks, and the roof shape references the gable roofs of the neighbourhood.
Although the area was zoned residential 1, the Dunedin City Council recognised there had long been a building on the boundary and did not enforce the usual 4.5m setbacks from each road frontage, which would have halved the buildable area.
The biggest challenge was working with the building's triangular shape, which made the placement of interior walls, and the design and build of the roof, especially tricky.
"The 'sides' of the triangle are dictated by the roads and are at different angles in relation to the back of the triangle," Mr Terpstra says. "Internal partitions were built either parallel or at 90deg to the [back wall] as the most efficient way to divide the spaces ... However, all areas with exterior walls, except for our bedroom and bathroom, have an angled wall following the line of one of the road frontages, making for quirky and interesting spaces."
The ground floor flat, not including a small outdoor amenity space, is just 49sq m while the interior of the apartment, excluding the garage and entry, is only 105sq m. But both believe challenges like this lead to better design outcomes.
In his professional life, Mr Terpstra particularly enjoys renovation work and finding "hidden" space that homeowners don't necessarily see.
"I quite like having constraints. You have to think about things a lot harder and, generally speaking, the solutions you come up with are much better."
To make his own two-bedroom apartment feel spacious, he drew an open-plan kitchen, dining and living area, with a pitched, 4.8m ceiling. Circulation space is minimal, materials were kept consistent and every inch of space was used efficiently. For example, the kitchen runs along one wall and the end of the hall serves as an office.
The keen gardeners were even able to include a west-facing terrace and a small garden.
Working on the existing building was a "mission" because it was so well constructed, with two courses of bricks separated by a cavity, Mr Terpstra says. The triangle was tied together at the top by a concrete bond beam, on which the parapet sat.
Before remodelling the ground floor flat, the director of Lowrise Design stripped the interior himself so he could recover the rimu rafters and beams. He then used them to build a slatted dividing screen and some of the stairs.
Mrs Terpstra, formerly head of design at Otago Polytechnic and now its director of academic excellence, says a green, "end-of-run" carpet became the starting point for the interior scheme and a nod to the mid-century style they like. Six glass and rimu light shades they had been storing in sheds for 25 years, waiting to be used somewhere, hang from the living room's plywood veneer ceiling.
Although it has taken them time to get used to the traffic noise in the area, the couple like that they rarely have to use a car themselves and that they live in a diverse neighbourhood with residents of varying ages. Many of them have been positive about the building's transformation.
"Part of our reason for keeping it was that even though it was built in 1944, that's 80 years ago and it's quite an old building now," Mr Terpstra says. "But it's also one of those ordinary little shops that everyone had on their corner, a reminder of what neighbourhoods used to be like, and we thought that was worth saving.
"It's a house we enjoy living in because it's not rectilinear and it's not straight-forward. It's given us an appreciation of quirky sites and spaces and what you can do with them. And there's a lot of undiscovered spaces like that in a city."