To listen to Jeremy Taylor's exclusive summer playlist inspired by this house, click here. Within weeks of the streets falling silent for the first Covid lockdown in 2020, architects Lance and Nicola Herbst’s thoughts turned to their small bach on Aotea Great Barrier Island. “We were looking to the future – everybody was,” says Nicola, “and wondering what it looked like. We were at home, with time on our hands, and we started to think we’d like to spend more time on Barrier.”
Some backstory: Lance and Nicola built the first iteration of their bach in 2000, not long after they emigrated from South Africa permanently. They fell in love with this island on a camping trip. Located at the outer edge of Tīkapa Moana the Hauraki Gulf, it’s technically part of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland but a world away. Not long after that, they bought a long, skinny section across the road from Medlands Beach.
In designing for the site, they looked to the bach for inspiration, but not in the way you’d expect. They recognised that these contingent, basic, lightweight buildings produce feelings of contentment, relaxation and joy. They’re about having less but enjoying it more, about a constant – possibly even occasionally uncomfortable – connection to the land and weather. Part of this approach was practical: the island is off-grid, with no mains water or power, which makes you think about everything.
They started with the most basic of needs: water, cooking and ablutions, designing a tower around an elevated tank with an inverted butterfly roof to capture rain. Below that was a basic camping-style kitchen in a cupboard that opened onto the front deck. Behind that was a small space for a composting toilet. Still further back, separate to the tower, was a small box for an outdoor shower. There was no attempt to build up over the dunes to get the view: instead, the place celebrated a sense of enclosure and retreat. As Lance has often pointed out – if you see the beach, then the beach sees you.
After a summer or two camping on the land and using the tower, which featured a canvas awning over a small deck, they designed and built a second structure. It had an inside space for living and sleeping, and a covered deck for open-air dining, directly adjacent to the kitchen. The external deck later gained slatted sliding screens to block the wind and define spaces. It became the heart of the whole place, where you sit from sunup to sundown. There’s a fire to cook on, lit every evening for warmth and ambience. The bach stayed like that until 2007, when they built a small two-bedroom sleepout at the bottom of the slope, freeing up the main house as a living space.
Those are the big moves and they’re great. But the place has always been something of an incubator for the Herbsts – a chance to test ideas before scaling them up for their clients. In doing so, they pay close attention to daily rituals and the movement of sun, wind and rain. The covered front deck area has found a home in many of their projects in the form of a lanai – a type of screened verandah that originated in Hawaii. Similarly, they built an enclosed bathroom courtyard, versions of which have featured in many of their projects. Most recently, they developed a design for sliding aluminium screens with translucent fabric stretched over them to replace curtains. Beyond that, they’ve fine-tuned the buildings almost yearly, adding new openings, bigger doors, more shelter, a screen.
By 2020, they had been pondering one particular issue for about five years. In winter, when the weather gets really wild on Barrier, wind and rain would come over the dunes and into the outdoor space no matter what. “Then we’re stuck in there with the fire on,” says Lance, gesturing to the living room. “That’s fine, but we had to get to the kitchen, so we started to wonder how we’d do that easily.” At first, they thought of glazing the whole front deck, but rejected that idea quickly. “We felt very strongly that we wanted to retain the feeling of this space.”
Covid and its lockdowns challenged their iterative approach. “We’d done so many variations of smaller things,” says Lance. “And Covid said: go larger; do this properly.” Lance was convinced the lockdowns could go on for five or 10 years. “I thought, if that’s the case and we’re going to be locked down all the time, let’s make our primary residence on Barrier.” Eventually, they came up with a plan to pull the little structure apart and put it back together again, enlarging it well beyond its original footprint.
By the time the second round of lockdowns rolled around in 2021, plans had been drawn up, consents granted. They wrangled permission to decamp to the bach “on the proviso we didn’t leave, and we said, ‘Well, that’s okay,’” Lance recalls. They set up an office in the spare room, while Lance got on the tools, completing as much of the work as he felt able to, before a professional crew took over. “I’d been wanting to take a sabbatical and make stuff for ages,” he says.
They took out the original bathroom, deepening the kitchen so it occupied the entire footprint of the tower. They enlarged the living space, taking over a narrow deck to provide access into the kitchen, then pushed out the roofline to create another covered deck to the south. Key to their thinking was a beam around the covered deck at the front of the house. They continued it around the perimeter of the house to create a natural line to build up to. Viewed from the back garden, it’s tighter, creating a distinctive frame over the rear verandah. “When we did that, we could feel the whole thing coming together.”
Many things changed, big and small. As well as new access and a feeling of enclosure, the kitchen now has a dishwasher, a proper gas hob and a full-sized fridge-freezer. They also upgraded the solar array and added decent lighting throughout the place, and they installed a proper septic system so they now have flushing toilets. In the sleepout, they built a narrow bathroom between the two bedrooms – though their shower is still outside and guests have to cross the lawn to the main washroom.
They thought hard about the line between experience and convenience. “We’ve got comforts we didn’t have before,” says Nicola, “but the way we move through the house and the way it can still open up to nature – that is the line that was important to keep on the right side of.” Continues Lance: “The intention is still there. You’ve still got to cross the grass to get to the bedrooms, and both bathrooms are still semi-external. It’s still this idea of encampments rather than buildings.” If anything, the changes have expanded their use of the place. Where previously the back deck was infrequently used, it has become a regular place to sit, and it has a lovely relationship with the garden.
They also added a layer of sophistication to the bach’s ply linings and simple details. That extended to brass fittings and Japanese cedar lining, and furniture by Eames; there’s a lovely stereo from Bang & Olufsen – though Lance’s original speakers, hooked up to a car battery and amp, powered by a solar panel on the roof, were also reinstated. “We changed as a practice,” says Lance, “so there’s this layer over this which is quite luxe, giving it a sense of what we would be doing for clients now.”
The bach is complete – for now. “We’ve run out of brief,” says Lance, slightly wistfully. “We don’t need more kitchen or more living room. We have two bedrooms and the bathrooms are really good. Those things have been fulfilled – I don’t think we’ll need more than that.”
1. Lanai
2. Living
3. Kitchen
4. Covered Deck
5. Washroom
6. Shower
7. Deck
8. Bathing Court
9. Bedroom
10. WC
