Country House in the City

by Pattersons

Sonja and Glenn are wonderful supporters of our work and have come back to us again and again.

This is their family home. It is in a stately street lined with Plane Trees leading to a perfect view of Rangitoto Island an active volcano in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf and one of the city’s best known landmarks.

The Hawkins had been living a few doors up the street perfectly happily in the home in which they had raised their four children when this property came on the market. It offered the potential to refine further their idea of good living as well as to make room for the frequent return of their university aged children. And their children’s friends. The possibility of a bigger garden was also very appealing as gardening, cooking and eating are clearly central to their lives.

While Sonja and Glenn had strong views on how they wanted to live they were completely open to the creative process. Their only stipulation was that the home be full of light and sun with a strong connection to the garden. Delightfully, they were not in any rush to complete the project so we had the time to ensure we got it right.

We set about creating a pavilion in a garden for them that became like a country house in a very urban location.
The form of the house is inspired by the symmetry of late 1960s Italian modernist buildings. I love the rigour of these buildings that you find in the industrial suburbs of Milan. There is a sideways nod here to the four 1960s modernist flats that were on the site.

For the exterior, we created a pattern from alternating windows with glass reinforced concrete panels within a steel framed structure. The front of the house is open and informal when compared with the high fences and security gates of the neighbouring properties but this suits the Hawkins’ way of living. The entrance courtyard is flanked on either side by a green roof garage. The street facing walls of the garages continue to soften as the Ficus cover spreads mirroring the verdent gardens behind.

The gently sloping site created the opportunity to step the living areas down unexpectedly opening up into a 3.8m high space.
Sonja is an accomplished interior designer and introduced a simple palette centred on raw oak and blackened steel. She and Glenn are generous supporters of the arts and have a magnificent collection of contemporary New Zealand works. They are also passionate about art being accessible to all and reflect this by not being at all precious about how they live with their own works. We weren’t asked to design any particular spaces or surfaces for art – Sonja and Glenn adapted their collection and display to the house as it evolved.

During early meetings we discussed the indefinable attributes of new and old in existing homes and the interesting juxtapositions that contemporary homes sometimes lack. This translated into a quality test of sorts in that we looked to create a home with a timeless, light filled, classic personality and a sense of soul.