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Otago Daily Times
18-07-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Looking sharp: That cool house on the corner
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."
Otago Daily Times
18-07-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Looking Sharp
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."
Otago Daily Times
26-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- Otago Daily Times
At home in its surroundings
Every room in this house has a mountain view and opens on to water. Kim Dungey reports. Nestled near Queenstown, this cedar-clad home is a shining example of how architecture can respond to its surroundings. Its most striking element is a twisted butterfly roof which mirrors the undulating peaks and troughs of the surrounding mountains. "Wings Over Water" was designed by Kamermans Architects, which was also responsible for the owners' previous house in Auckland. Project architect Marina Leenman said the couple wanted a sustainable, four-bedroom home with a sauna, a library and open-plan living areas. The house needed to be spectacular and a connection to the land was key. The large, flat site at Speargrass Flat was "breath-taking", Leenman said. As part of the resource consent, the owners had to provide screening from the neighbours, so one of the first jobs was designing mounds around the perimeter and planting over 100 trees. In an unusual move, the two large ponds were created after the house had been designed but before it was built. The size of the plot gave the architects freedom to place the house in the ultimate location in terms of orientation and capturing the views, she said. "We even had a very large map and ... kind of choreographed the building around the peaks." From the front door, there's a direct line of sight through to the conservatory, towards Coronet Peak. Meanwhile, Cardrona and the Crown Range are visible from the kitchen, dining and living areas. The house was designed with living spaces on the northern side and utilitarian spaces on the southern side. In the open-plan kitchen, dining and living area, the ceilings are at their highest, while in the bedroom wing, they drop down to create a more intimate atmosphere. The butterfly roof not only emphasises the drama of the surrounding landscape. It houses solar panels and its central gutter channels rainwater into in-ground tanks for reuse. Natural materials and colours connect the home to its surroundings. Textured timber floors blend seamlessly with the wooden deck, schist garden walls help ground the building in the landscape, and cedar weatherboards of alternating depths and thicknesses create a rippled effect that mimics the shadows created by the nearby trees. The cedar cladding folds up the angled soffits, which line up perfectly with ceilings on the interior — a feature that Leenman said would have been "insanely difficult" for builders Shore Construction to achieve. "There aren't many right angles in the roof and wall design." Triple-glazing and high-performance insulation contribute to the home's energy efficiency. The size and angle of the eaves were designed to allow the low winter sun deep into the interior and to prevent overheating in summer. The central conservatory, with its glass roof and tiled floor, serves as a winter heat sink. In the colder months, it produces passive heating for the whole house, while in summer it can be opened up to the outdoors to become a breezy courtyard. The end result is a sculptural building that is also sustainable.
Otago Daily Times
24-04-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Restoration a balance of two worlds
This Dunedin villa addresses the importance of heritage preservation and the need to improve our housing stock to be fit for modern life and future generations. It was recently shortlisted for the southern architecture awards, Kim Dungey reports. Located on a street lined with highly-detailed timber gable houses, this 1920s villa has been lovingly restored to maintain its public presence and extended to better take advantage of its dynamic surroundings. "We call the house 'The Weather Watcher' because you can see all the storms that come up the valley," owner, designer and carpenter Tony Calder says. While he and partner Julia Smith wanted to experience the changes in season, it's not like they feel exposed to the elements; the alterations have transformed the once-cold Dunedin villa into a warm and comfortable home. The couple bought the Belleknowes property sight unseen while living in Amsterdam. It was only when they returned to New Zealand that they realised there was potential to capture the sweeping views — over Kaikorai Valley and out to the ocean — and decided to renovate. At that stage, there was a separate lounge off the central hallway and a tiny kitchen at the back. The bathroom in the home's northwest corner was the only area to get a reasonable amount of sun and none of the rooms opened up to the view. A coin found lodged in behind a door frame suggested the house was built in about 1921, according to Mr Calder, a director of local architectural practice ahha Architects, who drew up plans for the alterations and did almost all the work himself. "It was in a bit of a state. It hadn't had any maintenance done and the last renovations had been in the 1980s or '90s.""Parts of the house we thought would be in an OK condition weren't. So we replaced a lot of the framing, the weatherboards and the roof," he says, adding the interior was largely gutted and only the two front bedrooms remained in their original position. Heritage elements were restored and celebrated, rotten floors and window frames were replaced and the back of the house was pushed out by 3.5m to give more living space. Clad in macrocarpa and leading to a new deck, the extension has windows carefully placed to capture the northwestern sun. It's cantilevered over a large flexible space below, which was created by supporting the house on props and digging underneath. Again, the weather was a consideration: "There was a wee bit of nervousness when it was just sitting on stilts because we get strong winds that come up the valley and you could feel the whole house shaking." Now 50% bigger than before at 180sq m, the house is also air-tight and well-insulated, with thermally-broken double glazing. Mr Calder says there are several ways to meet the New Zealand Building Code but his practice thermally models everything because it is the only way to accurately predict what will happen. "With thermal modelling, we've checked the size and placement of glazing and increased the amount of insulation in the house, increasing construction costs by around 2%. However, the house uses half of the energy a typical new build would use, giving a payback period of a year." Working on the house highlighted the need for much of Dunedin's building stock to be updated, he adds. "Dunedin has a lot of unchanged villas that ignore their environment and haven't had sufficient maintenance. There's an amazing opportunity to explore simple renovations which provide better access to the outside and increase the buildings' performance for a comfortable interior living experience, while maintaining their character value." When it comes to the interior, many of the new details reflect those in the ceilings and the facade of the old villa. There's a curved wall leading into the kitchen and an arch that is a contemporary take on the one originally in the hall. Mr Calder built the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry from miro, a native timber recovered from naturally-fallen trees. The panelling and built-in furniture in the extension are gaboon plywood and, referencing the home's 1920s origins, the main bathroom is tiled in terrazzo. Prioritising circular construction, timbers salvaged from the demolition were used throughout the house. Like many villas, this one originally turned its back on the views and light and had no connection to the landscape. Now it capitalises on its vantage point, allowing the owners to watch the weather rolling in while enjoying a warm, contemporary home. "I'm happy with how it takes in the wider context and positions you to feel connected to the place that you are," Mr Calder says. Before and After The alterations opened the house up to the sun and views, with flexibility to allow for changing needs. The plans below show the changes made to the upper floor.
