The first time Alisha and Piers Kay saw this Auckland home almost 10 years ago, it was still under the original family’s ownership. Built in 1954 by the acclaimed Group Architects, it had been rented out and wasn’t in great shape. “We didn’t even know it was a Group house when we first looked at it,” remembers Kay, a principal at Fearon Hay. “A lot of the original windows had been removed, it had an ugly tin roof and clumsy interventions – but it was interesting. You could see the clean lines and rigor of the original grid that existed.” Quickly realising the history and potential of the 8x8-metre home, the couple put in an offer but lost out. Their disappointment was short-lived, though. Just a few months later, they heard a rumour the house would be sold again.
Granted, the place looked a bit different. The buyers had subdivided the section by chopping off the park-like backyard and were looking to flick on the old two-bedroom home. In the interim, they’d made some alterations they believed made it more palatable to the market, like painting large parts of the exposed timber interior and adding a flashy new kitchen complete with orange splashback. Before they had time to wrap the home with decking, Kay made contact. “We told them to stop – immediately – and bought it.” While the reduced section size and modern alterations had made the home more affordable and liveable, the Kays felt the style didn’t serve their taste or the architecture. “We wanted an interior that felt true and authentic to the original design,” the architect explains. “Cleaner and sympathetic in its layout and organisation.”
The project is a story of two halves: restoration and renovation. The first took place shortly after the couple moved in. With the 1954 drawings on hand, Kay went about reinstating the original sliding windows and roof detailing. He also stripped the painted interior timber back to a more natural finish. All of which honoured Group Architects’ intention and design principles. “After this work, we thought we would keep it super pure and original, a small little house on the site, and live in it forever,” says Kay. “But things changed; our first baby on the way and needed more space.”
With a baby on the way, the couple decided to add an extension and properly address the garden. The house sits diagonally on the site (an unusual move questioned by the council back in the 1950s), so it’s surrounded by pockets of garden rather than flowing out to a traditional backyard. Working within the tight confines of the section, the architect slotted a boxy timber extension onto the southern face of the house for a new scullery/mudroom and main bedroom. The addition sits lower than the original home, dug into the ground in a subtle separation of old and new that reinforces the primacy of the original form. Sunken into the earth with glazed walls opening level with the backyard, the bedroom is a tranquil escape within the family home.
Its simple form and materiality were designed with budget in mind. Hesitant to introduce another material, Kay covered the exterior with a metal mesh. “It homogenises the building, making it a blank form,” he explains. Seen from the street, the mysterious finish of the low, square structure is entirely at odds with its suburban surroundings and was once even mistaken for a container home. “The mesh is a vessel for the plants to grow on and eventually it will be covered in green, so you’ll read the extension as a landscape structure and the original house will be the part that still sings.”
There’s a beautiful codependence between the house and its surroundings. Landscape designer Jared Lockhart used the home’s unique orientation to initiate a labyrinth of spaces, blurred moments and courtyards. “We found a magazine that had images of the original garden, which had a bit of a Japanese aesthetic, so we channelled that,” says Kay. There’s no grass or ground cover, instead the curated planted areas are connected by gravel or paving in a peaceful minimalist expression. It’s wonderfully serene, promises more beauty with age and provides every room in the glass-fronted house with a unique outlook.
Within the modest ’50s footprint and new extension, the design introduces innovative space-saving solutions. The main bedroom lacked floor area for a proper walk-in-wardrobe, so Kay cleverly separated the sleeping and dressing zones with a custom storage island. There’s generous built-in joinery, the scullery/mudroom and a reworked kitchen where a chunky stone-based table replaces a shiny island, imparting a casual flexibility that’s in tune with the Group Architects ethos.
The interior design centres around a calm, neutral material palette, consistent warm tone, clean lines and sharp detailing. Playing with contemporary iterations of the original plaster and timber interior, Kay introduced fresh elements with purpose, such as the bush-hammered-edge benchtops in the kitchen and the brass floor inlays that subtly define spaces within the home. “We love the bones of the house, but we didn’t want a cliché mid-century home set up like a snapshot in time,” he says. “The interior had to feel modern and to feel like ours.”
This tension between old and new is indicative of Kay’s overarching approach. He was respectful of the architecture, spending months consulting with the local council and North Shore Historical Society. But he treated the interventions as a separate entity, an evolution in the home’s story, rather than an homage. “I think heritage is really important and all of the work needs to be sensitive,” says Kay. “But I don’t believe anything in architecture is sacrosanct and can’t be edited again with the right sensitivities.” Indeed, as the Kays prepare to welcome their second child, they recognise it’s time to move on, and the architect is refreshingly philosophical about it all. “It’s just the next chapter for this home. Houses have other lives beyond us... but it may be hard to drive past for a while.”
1. Scullery/Mudroom
2. Kitchen/Dining
3. Living
4. Bedroom
5. Bathroom
6. Garden
