Cox Street, Merivale
By Bespoke Architecture
Sometimes Bespoke needs to go into battle with a council to achieve the best result for our client. On this project the site is in the heart of Merivale, Christchurch, close to a busy street of bars and the Merivale Mall. Privacy was key.
Our clients live with one foot in the warmth of Australia and the other in Christchurch to be near family. Their vision was for two units, one to live in and another to sell. Our design solution made the most of the site: two compact homes with 3 well appointed and large bedrooms for the grandchildren to stay, lots of natural sunlight and a sense of space. Outside, both houses have two living courts, a north facing court for all day living and entertaining and a secondary private court (both connected to the living space).
Our design complied with the requirements of the city plan but it didn’t comply with the urban planning rules. Sometimes rules are made to be broken.
The urban planner demanded we reduce the size of the garage and push the living room close to the street, which would have lost all privacy for the clients and given them no sunlight or north facing outdoor living. The homes would have felt compressed and unwelcoming. The planner couldn’t understand it is no good complying with rules if they make for a bad living environment.
Eventually our argument won the day and the council agreed to our design.
The result is a pair of homes, each with their own individual feel, privacy and great entertaining spaces. Good result, happy clients.
OUR CLIENTS SAY
“Our brief was a Duplex of lock and leave townhouses. The site was tight with our list of requirements plus we knew it wouldn’t comply with some council rules. Vincent and team fulfilled our brief extremely well and added some great exterior features that we wouldn’t have thought of. These features have been very well praised by people. Vincent worked alongside a town planner to overcome all the Council non-complying issues which wasn’t straight forward“
JOHN & DEBBIE FOWLER
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Cox Street, Merivale
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About the
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Architecture, Values, Getting it right
At Bespoke Architecture we get professional satisfaction in meeting the challenges of small and large budgets with creative solutions to build a home that is exactly right for our clients, with no wasted space or unnecessary detail. The difference between average design and great design is usually in the quality of the thinking invested and true understanding of the client’s needs and wants. An excellent relationship is sure to lead to better architecture, so we put energy into that, too.
The extra hours we invest in thinking through options and solutions are rarely billed but they allow us to consistently produce work we’re proud of. And there’s a lot of it. We park our ego at the door every morning and our sole goal is to get it right for our Clients. But we are quietly chuffed that in each of the past five years, our work has won national awards.
So what should you expect from us and why? Excellent architectural design (based on a genuinely caring attitude, strong architectural skills, deep commitment to the work), experienced and pragmatic problem solving (regulatory hurdles always need to be jumped and unexpected site issues will often crop up so we’ve become very effective at managing these), a high degree of responsiveness (clients frequently comment on this). We answer your calls and your questions promptly (fearless discussions), we bring our knowledge, skills, experience, creativity and commitment to every conversation — we’re all trying to achieve an outstanding result for you, after all.
If this sounds good and you’d like to talk to us about your project, we’d welcome your contact. We love architecture and producing an ideal result for our clients is what makes us tick.
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