“Most of our marriage we’ve lived with other people,” says homeowner Cathie Cottle. So when an opportunity arose for a new living situation, it created an interesting brief for Daniel Smith of Edwards White Architects.
Cathie and her husband Nigel and their three daughters had bought a large but dated house with their good friend Hannah Noel and her daughter. The idea was that both families would live in the Mt Eden, Auckland villa.
“Nigel and Cathie had previously lived with another family so they were quite used to communal living and they always have a lot of people around them,” says Daniel. “They really believe in their neighbourhoods and communities.”
Nigel and Cathie are the owners of socially-minded enterprises Kind Cafe and Crave in Morningside and this house renovation is very true to their ideals.
“We’ve always seemed to have had people living with us,” says Cathie. “Either families, or young people who struggled with life. So at the moment we co-own the house and we have our own areas but we have a shared kitchen and living space.”
The extended and renovated heritage villa in Auckland’s Mt Eden is co-owned by two young families: seven people in all with children ranging from primary-school age up to their early 20s. Daniel Smith of Hamilton-based Edwards White Architects already knew one of the families, the Cottles, after previously designing their eateries Crave and Kind Cafe in Morningside. “They are great clients,” he says.
“It's warm, dry, light-filled, and just so spacious,” says one of the homeowners, Cathie Cottle. “So even when we're all in that one living area together, we don't feel like we're on top of each other.”
Daniel says Nigel and Cathie took the lead on the kitchen design because they had strong opinions, being restaurant owners. “They chose their own piece of stone — a Brazilian natural granite from Universal Granite. They really liked the leathered feel of it, the tactile nature. They’re big foodies.”
Cathie and Hannah searched for the right house for two years. “We bought this poky old 1910 villa with very small rooms, almost like a rabbit warren. But someone had already punched through to the attic space and it had a garage underneath. So it had space.”
But how to translate that for two – quite different – families functioning under the same roof? Cathie says the original request was just to make the house nicer. “Daniel came back to us with that plan, but also another plan that was a lot more involved, but fabulous. That’s the one we ended up going with. We’re really happy we did as the space works so well with seven people living in a house together. The whole idea of living in a community is that you still need some individual spaces and room to breathe.”
Daniel says the focus was on creating more communal living spaces. “The ambition for this house was to create a light-filled, open living space that connected to the exterior,” he says. “There’s a large living room and kitchen that spills onto the outdoor deck. It’s welcoming, light and sunny and you could have a group of friends around without disturbing the rest of the house. Because they often do community dinners, they're all into inviting the neighbours around, and they do cooking classes. They really wanted to be able to host big groups of people. That's also the idea of those bleachers out to the pool. That space can be occupied by groups of people as well as connecting the different levels. You can sit and have dinner and chat away.”
Of course there’s space to get away from it all, says Daniel. “In the basement we designed in a wine cellar that’s also used as a contemplative space away from everything. There’s a separate media room, and two teenage daughters live downstairs: it’s separate enough so they can come and go as they want. Hannah and her daughter are upstairs and have their own living room, two bedrooms and a bathroom.”
The house has seven bedrooms, but Daniel says consideration was given to the use of the house for the next owners. “It could be intergenerational; you could potentially have grandparents living there with your family. I would say it's totally adaptable for future families.”
“They had the seven of them living in this home for a year and a bit while renovations happened,” says Daniel. “I think they had a little camp cooker.” The homeowners give credit to RUSA Construction for being easy to work with and being great with the kids during the build. The even helped set up a makeshift kitchen during lockdowns.
When the house was bought, it had existing decks off the living area none of which connected to the sloping back yard. The families now make the most of the extended house. “Nigel loves his cooking and barbecuing.”
New grandstand style stairs double as seating for outdoor living. The basement level was developed in the 1990s and badly needed updating.
Thought had to be given to the past, too.
“The street has a character overlay,” says Daniel. “Which has its challenges. The extension had to be in keeping with the existing house but with quite a distinct look from old to new.”
The new addition is clad in a cedar batten rain screen inspired by a traditional white picket fence.
“It’s like a clean, modern cloak that envelops the back half of the house. The gable form that references the existing typology but when you look from the front to the back it's a distinctly different aesthetic. We painted the whole building white and with the slimline battens running vertically it ties into the existing weatherboard aesthetic, but in a modern interpretation.”
The house is so nice to live in, says Cathie. “It’s a really clever design. It’s a light, open space with outdoor flow on a property that has a sloping section. That’s one of the things we wanted, a connection between the outdoor space where we’ve got a pool and spa to this internal living, and Daniel made it seem really natural. And we’ve been true to the heritage at the front of the house, I just love how it looks.”
Daniel says Edwards White Architects heritage renovations can be challenging. “You don’t know exactly what you’re going to get into until you begin to strip back the layers,” he says. “But there's a richness to it, a beauty in it, for sure. I am really proud of the end result.”
Original parts of the house were sympathetically renovated, as well as adding the extension.
The wine cellar in the basement is a place of retreat designed in contrast to the bright, white upstairs.
Homeowners Cathie Cottle and Hannah Noel did most of the house-hunting. Cathie says she doesn’t come across other community living scenarios very often. “But when I explain what we're doing, most people think it makes sense. Our families get to live in a beautiful large house that neither one of us could afford by ourselves and we also get to support each other with the children. It ticks all the boxes for us.”
