Architect Tim Nees is known for a body of work that cannot be typecast: from Wellington to Queenstown, he has designed houses with an artistic sensibility that makes each one unique.
For his own house at Taylors Mistake in Ōtautahi Christchurch, he took inspiration from many places: the baches down at the beach, faded and worn; Ian Athfield’s compound above Wellington Harbour in Khandallah; and – maybe more obliquely – the art of Giorgio Morandi who painted still lifes of objects on a shelf. The paintings are pastel, faded, muted, with a soft light: the combination of colour and scattered objects became a guiding principle for the house.
The house sits on a steep site above Taylors Mistake, with views across to Godley Head and the faded-out, tussocky hills: when he and partner Lesley Patterson bought it, there was a retaining wall and a flat piece of land on the otherwise steep slope, a memory of a house that had been flattened by the Christchurch Earthquakes.
The prosaic thing would be to build on the flat bit. Instead, Nees broke the house into four simplified white objects, arranging them on – or even pushing them off – the shelf around a sheltered courtyard planted with almond trees. At street level, there’s an elegant carport elevated on steel poles: below that, there’s the main house containing bedroom and living area, sitting on light pilotti, hovering above the slope with wide picture windows on one side taking in the view, and generous sliders on the other opening to the courtyard. A third box, taller, contains a dining room and the fourth object, separate from the house, is a two-storied studio.
It is a nuanced, layered design: from a distance, the house seems minimalistic and spare; up close, it’s textured and warm, with a palette of colours drawn from the surrounding landscape. Spaces are free-flowing, loosely conceived and even interchangeable – there is exactly one door, and that’s to the second bathroom. Materials are humble, including ply linings, a rubber floor.
Nees and Patterson moved into the house in 2016, and finished it in 2022 – last year, it was a finalist in the Here Awards. Now, work and life are calling them back to Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington – on, no doubt, to something equally artful – and the house is for sale with Nick Cowdy.
139 Taylors Mistake Road
Onepoto Taylors Mistake
Ōtautahi Christchurch
Nick Cowdy
