With only 10 metres square additional footprint to work with, the focus for this extension was on providing quality rather than quantity to enhance Nicki and Aidan’s family life.

Our design approach was to restore the good bits of the existing house and replace the bad to create a home celebrating modern family life.

In addition to refurbishing the villa, a cramped rear utilitarian lean-to was removed and replaced with a new addition that draws the living and dining area to the rear of the site where it can benefit from the afternoon sun, sky views and rear garden.

"This was a big undertaking for our family, but LOCA and Chris our builder made this as easy as it could be.  The final product has totally changed how we live with better indoor/outdoor flow, and options on how we go about our daily routine .  We now have spaces within spaces that gives us more storage and flexibility.  Doing this over buying a new home means we have something that we know works for us, and is going to last the distance.  Now, each time we come back from a holiday walking in the door is a treat as we're reminded what an awesome house we have! -AIDAN & NICKI

The addition aims to balance the largely internal villa with qualities of connection, openness, and playfulness. It is an intermediary between the villa and the backyard. Setting the floor down five steps from the villa, enabled a generous stud height and connects the living directly out to the lawn. Built-in joinery maximises the efficiency of the space and provide a sense of playfulness and calm.

Sustainable materials such as plantation plywood linings, NZ Radiata laminated timber and larch cladding provide wonderful texture and warmth, inviting family and friends to sit and enjoy the sun, sky and garden.

Refurbishing the villa included much needed repairs, a thermal upgrade, alongside fixing the planning blunders of a previous 1990’s alteration. The central villa corridor has been activated with a lightwell filled with Nikki’s indoor plants and a modern joinery insertion housing the laundry.