Simple things: Sweeping views over the Manukau Harbour.
Gordon Moller is known for many things, not least the Sky Tower, but he has also designed some excellent houses in his time. Completed in 2003, this holiday house at Orua Bay sits on the edge of the Manukau Harbour, with a track down to the sea and sweeping views over the water.
Moller’s design was typically simple, with a steel frame and cedar cladding: walls of glass offer up the views while deep overhangs from the monopitch roof control temperature and prevent over-heating.
Inside that frame, the plan is simple: a square, with a six-metre, double-height living room to the front. Behind that, reached up a central stair from the living space, are two bedrooms – each with their own bathroom – sit upstairs and are open to the void, looking through to gain remarkable views, while cedar shutters offer privacy. Charmingly, these also connect to a bridge that crosses the living space, allowing you to get right up into the view. Separate to the main house is a garage, with a further third bedroom and bathroom above.
Now 20 years old and remarkably well-maintained by its fastidious owners, it’s a wonderful opportunity to own an original architecturally designed house in a beautiful – but relatively unknown – location.
130G Wattle Bay Road
Orua Bay, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
A thing of beauty: An architectural classic by Sir Ian Athfield.
It’s easy to forget that many houses by the late Sir Ian Athfield were quite glamorous – as was the case for this house, built in 1975 for the Cole family on the upper North Shore of Tāmaki Makaurau in a private 4000sqm glade of native bush.
Featuring five bedrooms, multiple bathrooms and multiple living areas, the place is long, strung out across three wings in a wide U around a raised swimming pool. You enter across a timber bridge and into the elbow between two wings: there’s formal living to one side, family living areas to the left; beyond that, bedrooms, bathrooms and kids’ living areas, including a particularly compelling area that feels like a plastered cave. The main bedroom is upstairs, with its own living area overlooking the formal living room.
Featuring towers and portholes and a mixture of ceiling heights – some vailted, some compressed – it’s a beautifully resolved, highly experiential house. Refurbished by its current owners with a new roof and repaired cedar joinery, it’s definitively Ath, in excellent original condition.
24 Channel View Road
Campbells Bay, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
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