Koia Architects HQ

The Ultimate Recycle Context should always a consideration when planning a home close to an historically significant structure, and this was certainly at the forefront of architect Tony Koia’s mind when he purchased a piece of land for his new offices at Arthur’s Point, near Queenstown. “Right next door is the popular Gantley’s Restaurant, a large historic stone building, so whatever I put on the site, I felt it needed to tie in visually – as though it could have been the original owners' house." Koia found what he was looking for in Christchurch, in one of the city’s red zones, just a day before the demolition crew was due to move in and pull it down. What he purchased was a circa 1900 villa that was an amalgamation of three key styles – an original villa, modified with bungalow windows timber panelling inside, then added to with a new kitchen and bathroom in the 2000s. "The house was cheap enough, at $20,000, and the transportation added about $60,000,” says Koia. “Most of the cost was in restoring the house and putting the two pieces back together after we’d chopped it half to get it down here. It's a very brutal exercise, but you can put these things back together again fairly simply." Whilst renovating, Koia made many improvements to the house, like introducing underfloor heating with piped hot water, and a 100% heat-efficient gas fire that recycles all the heat back into other rooms in the house. Modern lighting was also introduced, to meet office and living requirements. “It would have probably been just as economical to start again,” admits Koia. "But now it’s done now, and good for another hundred years.”