1 They say one of the most rewarding and challenging things you can do is build your own home. In this series, I'm following people chasing their dream and the architects that help make that dream a reality through the vagaries of weather, tough land and ever-increasing budgets. This episode sees an architect designing a building for his mate, who has more cars than he knows what to do with. The site is in a bloke's dream location, but it's going to be a hard one to tame. Copyright Able 2014 City fringe sites can be valuable, but they can also be tough to get the most out of and a pain to build on. An architect's challenge is to get the most out of the small space available, and Matt Brew knows a bit about that. Matt Brew's an architect who enjoys upcycling urban buildings. His practice is also a home and a showroom for his classic cars. I've got a real interest in city fringe, you know, buildings, mixed-use developments. His client also loves classic cars, but his old basement just isn't big enough to hold them. Being a typical Kiwi bloke, you want a bit more room. This narrow, steep site is going to take some taming, especially since they want to put almost six times the amount of building on it. Matt Brew has a penchant for cars and an interest in urban living. All of which he manages to wrap up in his practice ` Cantilever Architects. His profession is also his passion. I just knew when I left school that I wanted to do something creative, um, and that I'd regret it if I didn't. And architecture seemed like a good mix between, uh, the artistic side and also an analytical side, which I thought I'd do well at. They always tell you at school you're not a good architect till you're 60. Hopefully it's not that long. I'd hope we're doing some good work now, but it always gets better as you assimilate things and get more experience. Part of the draw into architecture for me was that I could work into retirement age and still be doing the odd job and keep active in that way and still be creative as you get older. There are rock star architects that want to build monuments to themselves, but essentially you're working for a client and you're working for the end user as well ` people interacting with the buildings that we build all day and every day. Um, and we like to think that what we add to society is` has a value to it. Matt's designed a variety of buildings in his 20 years of practice, and one of his passions is a multipurpose mixed-use model, like this home office building he designed for himself here in Central Auckland. I really like seeing the potential of what an existing building can become. You can get an office and a home in the same property, and therefore they end up working quite well financially. But I also like the flexibility of the space and the fact that it's not necessarily a commercial space and it's not necessarily a residential space. Matt's about to embark on a project for fellow car enthusiast and mate of 20 years, Justin Cardon. The location is the city fringe suburb of Kingsland, where Justin's owned this old villa and the red shop next door for over a decade. On the one hand, Justin will be sad to see this place go, but with his hobby of collecting cars and his job wrangling them for film and television, there's a vehicle overload. He needs more space. So, what's this car here? It's a '70 Dodge Coronet ` uh, sort of, another design they did in the '70s that you either loved or hated. The '70s American Brutale. The '70s American Brutale. Yeah, it was sort of the NASCAR era where they dumped massive engines into a body and let them rip and see if they'd stop. They all operate, and they'll keep operating for the next 20 years, whereas you can't really say the same about a lot of modern cars. It's beautiful, but it is tight for you. It's beautiful, but it is tight for you. I should've collected motorbikes, but it's one of those things where if you're gonna work on one, you gotta work on one side at a time. So, uh, yeah, it was, sort of, a plan to dig a bigger garage down here was the initial, uh` which was the initial idea. And this is why they say you shouldn't have architects for mates. What started as a request for some more basement space has ended up with Matt designing Justin an entirely new building. And no small one at that. I think there was an element of me convincing him that there was a limited value in the building that he already had on site. It needed a lot of work, but mainly it was just orientated wrong on the site, and there's no outside living space, and it's not really a good domestic dwelling. And then for me to spend the money on that building, it was never gonna be the perfect site for it. So I, sort of, went away, and off my own bat I did some little sketches of what it might be. I came back to him with a building that looked like the frontof his Dodge Coronet. And I think it tweaked his interest, especially getting a building that might look like a car. It certainly wasn't high architecture, but it got him into the project a bit. And then he decided he wanted a garage that was cooler than mine, so he started adding bits to it, and the project's grown a little bit from there. Grown is right. Matt's design includes a four-bedroom home, eight-car garage and a separate workshop. There's a studio, and he's added a revenue stream, with a new shop next door to the existing one. It's a big wish list, and Matt's worked hard to maximise Justin's build. His design makes the most of the site by flattening it out. On the lowest level is the workshop with a car pad and garage stacked above it at street level. Above this is the residential area, which soars up to a fourth level, containing the master bedroom tower, and incorporates separate studio space out front. The shops at street level will help pay for the whole thing. With such a narrow and steep site, I wonder how Matt's gonna make all this happen, so I'm meeting him outside the old villa to see how it's all going to fit. Gidday, Matt. Gidday, Matt. Hi, Pete. How you going? Gidday, Matt. Hi, Pete. How you going? Yeah, good. So this old girl, she's gone. She's gone. She's gone. So take us through what you're gonna put in its place. The shop remains as it is. It's part of the fabric of Kingsland. Next door to it, we're putting in a new retail or office tenancy with a glass frontage to the street. And above that there's a studio, uh, which is a multi-use space. We'll fit the driveway down the side where the gable form is. Above the garage, there's a residential unit, and that's a living area and four bedrooms. And the four bedrooms are located above the existing shop, and they look over the top of this side of the building, out to the views out to the Waitaks. Can we look at the driveway and see where it slopes down the section? Can we look at the driveway and see where it slopes down the section? Yeah, no worries. So this is us. So this is us. That's the rear end of the building. Mate, she's a dump, really. I mean, look at it. Yeah, and it's not suited to the site, so, um, it can go have another life somewhere else, I think. Take us through from the back of the shop. The back of the building, you've got two stories of bedrooms, which is the most prominent vertical feature. Beside that, slightly lower down, you've got the living area, which is facing back out to Eden Park, and below that, the car parking, and then below that, we've got the workshop, which is cantilevered out over the bank here and just slung underneath the turning area deck. So the views will be quite nice here once you've gone up. The views will be great. We'll get a view out to the Waitaks from the upper levels and then from the living area, we get a great view back out to Eden Park. So it's a little bit southerly, but still, it's a great outlook for a residential property. This is a big undertaking for client Justin, and already the build cost is playing on his mind. Got your little bit of loot together and thought, 'Once in my life, it'd be nice to have a pad that I can maybe have everything into.' So, you know, it's a dream. Maybe it might work. Are you looking forward to it? Are you looking forward to it? I haven't really got hugely excited. I'm not doing backward flips and that. It scares me more than excites me more. I really want it to happen, but you are sticking your neck out. Matt initially came up with this design five years ago, but by March 2011, Justin's ready to push the go button on this massive project. Justin is a mate, you've known him for a very long time, and he originally wanted somewhere to store a car, and now he's got this. Is it gonna affect your friendship? I mean, it's a huge build, really. Oh, look, I'd hope not, and it's a big part of this build is that I need to get Justin a place for him to live, for the cars to live. It'll be a whole different way of life. If it goes calmly and smoothly and you have a good time, I just think this is absolutely remarkable. I wish you all the best. I just think this is absolutely remarkable. I wish you all the best. Thanks, mate. If it gets finished, this building will change the face of Kingsland one way or another. Its design is clever, it's cool, and it squeezes every bit of potential out of this site on a busy road. My only qualms are I wonder if they're trying to do too much here. Is it going to be so industrial, it no longer feels like home? Not to mention the complications of building on steep, skinny, scrappy site. It's gonna be fascinating to see how this one turns out. Auckland architect Matt Brew has an ambitious project that's about to start construction. This old villa and its 100m2 of floor space is to be replaced by almost 600m2 of buildings and vehicle storage in Kingsland, overlooking Eden Park. It's an area that Matt's fond of and is excited to be contributing to. So, what is it about Kingsland that does it for you? Oh, I've always quite liked Kingsland. It's a city fringe area. There's lots of nice old commercial buildings. It's got a nice little community to it. It's a social place. It's a little bit of a village down here, which is quite nice. But I'm just interested` I like city fringe buildings, and this is about as suburban as I'll go, you know. Any further, and you don't get me out there. Most of those commercial buildings were built by a single greengrocer, AW Page, whose empire grew over 40 years here, and included one of the country's first petrol stations, now a burger joint. In fact, these days the old grocer's, picture theatre, villas and post office have all found new uses, and Matt Brew's aware that this very public building will have to sit in harmony with them. Do you feel a responsibility as an architect to look after that space, to change it or to be part of that? Absolutely. I mean, everything you do, you try and be contextual to what's around you. Um, and Kingsland is a heritage area, and we did try at pains to make everything as in scale with the existing streetscape that we could, um, but express it as a modern building. But before Matt's vision can be realised, there's a not-so-modern building that has to go, and that'll take some time ` another eight months, in fact. By November, it's finally time for this villa to leave site. It's a busy road, so the move will have to be done at night. The building's already been jacked up on to a trailer, but getting it off site will be a tricky job. Very quickly, the uneven ground causes the building to rock from side to side, perilously close to Justin's shop on the left. With a tight clearance on the right side as well, this is nail-biting stuff for Justin and Matt and good entertainment for a rapidly assembling crowd. TENSE STRING MUSIC After a fair bit of manoeuvring, the villa scrapes past its last obstacle and on to the street, where Kingsland's midnight revellers are treated to an unusual sight. Hats off to them. Hats off to them. There were lots of cars. They didn't even touch or remove the cars. They didn't even touch the car. That was amazing. That was your house? > That was your house? > That was my house. (LAUGHS) So it was a bit of nail-biting stuff. With the project now at the point of no return, Justin's home of 15 years disappears down the road. He's already several hundred thousand dollars in, and now he has a steep and empty patch of dirt. I, for one, admire his steel. No, it's been a very good house, even though she's been around for a long time. It's been a long time coming, and now we'll see some action reasonably quickly. It's been a long process to get to here, and this is actually` today is a pretty big step just seeing some action on site. A month later, there's more action a and a lot less dirt on site. The excavation is turning the once useless hill into a series of steps so every inch of the site can be utilised. The drilling for the support piles is well underway. It's been an absolute age since I seem to have been on Matt Brew's site here in Kingsland, but it's going ahead in leaps and bounds. This is the new building office. It's like a little industrial site here. It was supposed to take three weeks for this piling system, but they are rocking ahead, and it looks like they're gonna achieve it in the next few days. It's going incredibly fast. It's apparent that this site is a lot bigger than it first appears. It's spread all the way down the hill to the bottom, these piles are going in, and the level of complexity is enormous. It's like falling down the rabbit hole. You look at this place, and you see the driveway and think, 'It's a wee shopfront and a couple of windows,' and then suddenly you come down, and it just expands out and down the hill and out to the view and the sides above the railway line here. To get an idea of what I'm talking about in terms of volume, I'm now standing on probably the second to bottom level at the moment. And this space is gonna come out to past here and up as high as the top of this roof and higher and right across. Now, that is a massive volume. And to come that far out of the ground, the building team will have to go a fair way into it. These deep steel and concrete piles will provide support for Justin's cantilevered workshop space. As fast as this job was going ahead, right now putting these footings and pilings and these great steel things into the ground to hold everything up, it's still a really long build. This is going to take probably until December of next year ` a year from now. It was due to finish in July, so they're six months behind. So the scale of what they're building is enormous. It's,... I would think, very daunting. A fortnight later, it's almost Christmas 2011. While things are OK on this steep site, everything they're trying to do here is incurring some steep bills, and the budget doesn't have much wiggle room. Oh, the site's sort of coming along, but, uh, you know, not really that excited. It's one of those things where it's a slow progress, and I think I've probably had every consultant on the planet as an adviser on this, which is not by my choice, but it's just what has to be thrown in your lap. Do you dare give me a number for all these things? Uh, for the paperwork, oh, it's over $100,000. Really? Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. That seems rather high. But that's all right from day one ` from four years ago. That's calculating everything. Well, I admire your stoicism, Justin. I really do. (CHUCKLES) I'm scared to look at figures. BOTH LAUGH It's all phone numbers now. It's all phone numbers now. At least, yeah. Nothing` No bill's in hundreds. It comes over` Everything's got at least four digits to it. You know, if it hadn't been for Matt, I'd probably be in a bit of an asylum, actually, cos he's actually brilliant. The rules change on him too. As an architect, nothing's ever consistent. I look at him at times and feel sorry for the poor bugger, because getting the gratification out of the project, it just must be very minimal for him. I think in some ways he could be more stressed that I am. So the relationship is intact? There's`? Oh, definitely. I think I've got to fix his car today, actually. Oh, right. Oh, right. BOTH LAUGH Oh, right. BOTH LAUGH When I can do that, I'm not sure. The worst-case scenario ` if it does blow out and you end up with financial issues, would you sell it, would you lease it all out and rent somewhere else yourself? Oh, look, that's the options. You can't, sort of, be in a property if you think you might hang yourself over it, and it's not about` it's about making something better, not worse. So there are a couple of options there. But, uh, we'll have to strike that when the time comes. But it does look possible, and it looks like things are moving, and it looks like it's in a good place before Christmas, so... It will be done. It will be done. Happy Christmas. I hope` Happy New Year. I'll think of you as I eat my two-minute noodles for Christmas Day. (LAUGHS) So that's 2011 for architect Matt Brew and his client Justin. Things are running a little slow, but with the site cleared and the foundations well underway, things are looking OK. Just OK. This is always where I feel for the clients particularly. All that money spent, and the fact is you've gone backwards in a funny sort of way. Where Justin at least used to have a house he could sleep in, now there's just a hole in the ground and a whole lot of bills to pay. Still, soon it will be a happy new year and hopefully a happy new build. If you're planning your dream home, then talk to ANZ. We have more home-loan experts to help bring your thinking to life. INSPIRING MUSIC DOOR SLAMS She's in a violent relationship, and she's doing her best to hide it. Her mum, her aunties, friends and neighbours. They all know something's going on, but no one's saying anything. It's hard to know what to do. Ange. Are you OK? But the sooner you reach out to someone living with family violence, the sooner they can get help. Find out more at... It's been almost a year since I first met Auckland architect Matt Brew and saw plans for his latest project ` retail, residence, eight-car garaging and a workshop for his petrolhead mate of 20 years, Justin Cardon. With over 90% of this narrow, steep site being utilised and a busy road, head builder Junior has his work cut out for him. This project has been quite an awkward one, particularly with the slope. I mean, we're pretty restricted with what we can bring on site. We haven't got much room, as you see, particularly when you got 80-ton crane coming on site. You gotta make sure that the site is constantly clean and tidy, and, um, yeah, things can go wrong. The installing of the cantilever will be a challenging part of the build. Matt's managed to make the most of this site by building out of it, cantilevering the eight-car garage and workshop space into thin air. It's an architectural feature dear to Matt's heart, so much so that he named his business after it. Getting his cantilever installed will take a lot of time with the crane and precision measurements to lock the diagonal steel struts on to the deeply drilled support piles. But in this case, the site's speaking back, and with all the best work done on paper, things aren't quite fitting. It's ending up taking more time with that crane. This is costing a lot of money, man. And some good old elbow grease to get the steel bolted down. By March, the concrete floor's ready to be poured over Matt's cantilever, enclosing the workshop space below, which is so heavily engineered in steel and concrete that even the nearby locomotives can't shake it. Later that month, Matt and I are able to enjoy a new flat surface and substantial extension to the site. Wow. This really is extraordinary. This cantilever now has lifted us up and shoved us right out into the tops of the trees here. And the view's wide open. It's amazing. You're quite far up above the actual ground through here, and it's quite a nice structure holding the bottom of the building up, which has now been obscured by Justin's billboard down below here. The rent payer? The rent payer? Yeah, that's right. It's covering up the art. It's pretty amazing, though, cos you are in the tops of the trees here, and as you go higher, the view will only get better. Yeah, no, it's gonna feel like you're in quite a tall building once we get up a few more levels. What's amazing about this is I didn't expect it to be... I suppose the word is, to be so beautiful because of the view and being in these trees. I expected more industrial, facing the street and that. But here we are, and it's incredible. Yeah, it's a very open site in the back here. It's quite a different building from the front than the back. You'll be looking up at this from down below, and it is gonna feel like quite a, you know, big-scale structure from down there. Whereas from Kingsland it's two storeys, and it's pretty much in keeping with the rest of the scale of the buildings down Kingsland Road. Do you get excited at this stage when it starts to come up out of`? Do you get excited at this stage when it starts to come up out of`? I love this stage of the building. It's the best bit. It's almost better when it's unrealised, cos you still have that imagination. So you've got your plans and you've lived through that, and now you're starting to see it come to reality and you start to get a much greater sense of the spaces as they're gonna be. But it's not all in front of you. You've got to use your imagination. It's the best part of the project. Until now, this build had only been visible from the road below, but the arrival of precast concrete panels will give a first peak of it from the top of the site as well. They'll also show the beginnings of the building's form. This will mean more exacting work with the crane and from the guys on the ground to get things in place. As more panels arrive, the area of the eight-car garage starts to be defined. Uh, eight panels today, yep, yep. All the boys are working very well. They're all cooperating. No danger at the moment. All safe. Everything's fitted in nicely and all that. Yeah, nah, it's worked out marvellous. While the Kingsland project's taking shape, I'm catching up with architect Matt Brew at a past project, Generator, in Auckland's Britomart complex. Britomart's had a transformation in a short space of time, with many old buildings taking on a new lease of life, including this one. We're in one of your buildings ` the Generator building downtown. What was special about this? Well, we helped out on this about 18 months. It's a serviced office concept. The developers and architects have done a great job on refurbishing some of the old buildings down here, and they're expressing all the old fabric of the building, so they've got a real textural quality to them. We helped fit out inside the framework, doing things like a reception and meeting rooms and helping out with desking layouts. You're being modest, because this space is clever. If you look behind us, there's a very crooked wall. They make spaces interesting and quirky, so that's quite special. There's a bit of that going on. We're trying to get quite a few meeting rooms into that space, and I played round with the walls to create a bit of false perspective as you walk through. If you put them on angles, as you walk into these tight corridors, they open out and feel bigger than they are. It's a bit of a play on one of my favourite sculptural artists, Richard Serra. It's nice to see this reworking of old spaces into contemporary ones. It's a texture and history Matt's incorporated into his current Kingsland project by keeping the old concrete shop on site. There's a bit of this around now ` expressing the history of the building. People feel comfortable in it. You're seeing the old structure, the old materials and the old texture, and once you embellish it with furniture and art on the walls, the spaces can really pick up and sing. On top of that, Matt's looking at a reworking of his own. You've had a change of circumstance. You've moved towns ` uh, in fact, countries. Yep. Yep. Tell us about that. Well, my wife has been working trans-Tasman for about 18 months now, and an opportunity's come up for her to move to Sydney, or to take on an opportunity within her company, and as a family, we've decided it's a good opportunity for a couple of years to get out and see something new. With money tight on this build, Matt's now using his own funds to fly from Sydney to Auckland and is managing to be on site about every two weeks. Client Justin, on the other hand, I haven't seen for some time. It's imperative at this stage that Matt's relationship with the council, the engineers and Junior, the site manager, is strong. And thankfully, it seems to be as this juggernaut of a building gains momentum. I'm pretty sure you're gonna hear that one standing in there. I'm pretty sure you're gonna hear that one standing in there. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right. Working with Matt ` um, excellent architect to work with. We, uh, seem to get on really well, understand each other, what` what we can do and what we can't do. So it's pretty flexible with Matt. And he's there to help us, and we're there to help him as well. This building, then, is trucking along. But I get the feeling it faces a few more hurdles down the road. If you're planning your dream home, then talk to ANZ. We have more home-loan experts to help bring your thinking to life. INSPIRING MUSIC This is the most exciting part of the build for me ` when you arrive on site, you haven't been here for a while, it's exploded out of the ground, and you get an idea of the shape and the space and what it's gonna end up like. I really like it in this state. Architect Matt Brew's design in Central Auckland is mixed use. It spans four levels and seems to be taking shape nicely. Over seven months, I've watched as the old villa was taken away for use elsewhere and the potential of this large site was realised with a major excavation and the addition of a cantilever, which supports an eight-car garage and workshop space beneath. The bones of this building are steel and concrete, and now they're joined by timber framing. The thing just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. And the views are sensational. But this building's having its challenges. Having been priced up several years ago, costs have changed, and although the contractors are on site, their tender was a bit more than expected. Then there was this surprise manhole, which has affected the footprint of the building and meant some last-minute design changes. Now there's been the discovery of a cracked sewer pipe beneath the building, holding up the pouring of the garage floor and pushing the building programme out of sync. Architect Matt Brew is now holding everything together for his client and mate, and I can see it's no easy task. Yeah, I mean, look, Justin's got some, um, personal issues going separate from the project. His time that he wants to spend on site has diminished a bit in the last few months, um, and I've tried to step up and keep everything ticking over, um, and hassle him as little as possible in the last couple of months, I guess, which has been a bit difficult. which has been a bit difficult. Been tough on the friendship? which has been a bit difficult. Been tough on the friendship? No, I don't think so. In some ways, we've spent a bit of time together in different ways. No, I don't think so at all. Um, but for me, just` I guess the main thing for me is not seeing his engagement in the process and his enjoyment at the moment as the building comes together, and for me, you know, you spill a bit of blood on all of these projects, um, and your reward in a lot of ways is your client coming on site and sharing that with you and seeing the building come together, um, and seeing a bit of joy. At the moment, we probably don't have a lot of that, um, but I gotta hold on to the belief that that'll happen. um, but I gotta hold on to the belief that that'll happen. Tricky question ` are you actually gonna make any money out of this? are you actually gonna make any money out of this? (CHUCKLES) Uh, uh, no. (CHUCKLES) (CHUCKLES) Uh, no, this project has taken too long, and, sort of, my time is really where the cost is for me on this one. But I'll have to get my joy out of this one and my payoff in other ways. I mean, I'll see the building built, and hopefully Justin gets in here and has a smile on his face, um, and I'll spend time here. Um, and that's where my payoff will be on this one. It's for my art, not for my bank balance. I'm really feeling for these guys. I mean, there are challenges galore here This was a lot of building to take on and a lot of cost. And the current circumstances have to be adding to the stress levels. Still, there is reason for optimism. These guys are getting what's looking to be a great building. By the following month, the street-facing shopface is taking shape. And across town at the cladding factory, the building's skin is being prepared. One of the key visual feature's of Matt Brew's design is this zinc cladding. Ultra-light and ultra-strong, this product isn't ultra-cheap, but it survived within the tight budget. Matt's designed the zinc to be folded vertically in an irregular pattern. It'll encase the second floor, defining two floating box-like shapes over its entire length. This zinc looks flimsy, but once installed, it's incredibly durable. The vertical pattern is taken from Matt's working model and programmed into the folding machine. A few folds later, and we finally get to see what the outside of the building will look like. Before they encase the building, they'll need to be stored on the crowded site while they're prepared for fixing to the exterior, which is a job requiring some precision. You get in trouble if` Well, not trouble, but it makes you look bad if you have to order another sheet, cos the littlest little <BLEEP> will wreck it. That's why the whole 'measure twice, cut once' works very well. Is that hard up? That's good there if you hold it there. It takes a week to install the cladding, which brings the look of the building to a whole new level. Yeah, a lot of good comments from the street there about the building itself, and they really like the design of it and the material that was used. Um, a lot of people walking round the street and wanting to know what the material is and who's supplying it and all that. So it's a good advertising spot for everybody to see and admire as well. ROCK MUSIC And with the build approaching the finish line, it's time to say goodbye to the scaffolding. So, today all of a sudden, the look of the place is changing quite dramatically. Every builder's, um, dream is to get the scaffold out of the way so we could see a clear picture of, um, what we meant to build, and, um, you know, it is exciting for, um, us builders when we do see the scaffold getting removed. And as you see now, it's quite a smart building. I'm quite happy just to sit down at Eden Park and look across the road and see the building itself. It always looked industrial. Looking up at this, I'm going, 'Oh my God, it's actually got beauty in it.' Yes. I could, um, actually say thanks to` to Matt. He's done a wonderful job designing with the type of material, the type of product that he wanted there. You know, he's done a really good job of designing the building. I'm very keen to see what Matt Brew, the man himself, thinks of the cladding design in reality. So now the scaffolding's gone, what do you think? I think it fits in well with the street. It's nice to see it today in that context, especially with the scaffolding down. But you look down the street, and there's quite a consistency with the buildings. There's some timber on the building next door. The upright lines seem to join it with everything else, and it seems to blend into` I could tell you that we've planned all that, but we really hadn't. We designed this about six years ago, so it's just a little bit of a coincidence. But you're right. I mean, there's quite a consistency of materials, and the buildings are fitting quite well together down the street. After a more involved and probably more stressful process than expected, it's great to see Matt getting some real enjoyment out of the newly exposed building. Having said that, there's still a fair amount of finishing, and I get the feeling Matt's looking forward to seeing the back of this thing. What a lovely little space this is, isn't it? What a lovely little space this is, isn't it? Yeah, no, it's feeling pretty good. As you approach the finish line, how is it feeling to you? It's actually feeling pretty good now that I can see the end in sight. It has been a long process for us. Um, some projects just seem to take a lot of your time, and this has been one of those projects. So, um, we've sort of invested in the building ourselves and hope there's a payoff at the end of it. Um, but it's really nice that most of the hard work is done now. The building comes together so you start seeing the realised picture come to life, um, but it'll be quite nice to get to that end point and have a bit of a break from it as well. It looks like the team will have this build completed by the end of 2012 ` a year and a month after the first soil was turned. There's still a great deal of finishing, but I can't wait to see what it looks like and hopefully what Matt's client thinks of it. Soon you'll be able to invest in Genesis Energy. They're right across this land. # They're in Di's house, Don's shed, # Jim and Mary's water bed, # his patch, their bach, # the under-12s hockey match, # tumble dryers, # deep-fryers, # anything with lots of wires. # anything with lots of wires. # They are everywhere, man. They are everywhere... To get your investment statement, go to genesisenergyshares.govt.nz, call 0800 90 30 90 or speak to a broker. # They are everywhere. # More than six years ago, architect Matt Brew designed a modern, multi-use space to replace this old villa in Kingsland. His mate Justin wanted an oversize garage and workshop for his classic cars, so 18 months ago, the house was removed, revealing a challengingly steep and narrow site. Matt's design aimed to turn 100m2 of space into almost 600m2 by excavating the site and employing a cantilever. I watched Matt sweat bullets over this one as he took control of the build and attempt to help his mate through. And now in April 2013, it's pretty much finished. From the western side, the two box-shape forms of this building are revealed. The new retail area is a departure from the old shop but still manages to fit in with its proportions. Although it's now nine months old, the zinc cladding hasn't weathered at all and looks as good as the day it was installed. Walking over the area where the old villa sat, I can already say this is one of the most significant transformations I've seen so far. The last time I saw Matt and this main living area one level above the street it looked pretty different. Now the space is finished, tastefully decorated and, for the first time, blends in with its grandstand view. It's lovely to see this tree still here. And in the summer with the leaves still on it, provides a really good screen to the bedrooms. Staying on this level, one of the bedrooms is decked out as a bar and library. The back wall of the old shop gives the view texture and a sense of history of the site. Moving from the more private southern box to the northern one via the screen walkway, the studio space keeps the building grounded in Kingsland with a close connection to the street below. The frosted glass stairwell cover is a real star here and plays nicely between the zinc, concrete and steel. We tried to use a lot of basic industrial detailing around the building. I mean, you'll see a lot of expressed steel work, like in the steel frames, and we've expressed them and painted them black, which looks good. You see this around the building a few times ` on the back stair and the gates is a similar detail, where we've just used really simple steel angle, and we're using this one as a balustrade but also as a screen so it filters the light as it goes through, and obscures your view as you look through. I love all this this industrial stuff, all this stainless steel nuggety knobs at the back of it. We're designing between a commercial and residential building so you're happy to use commercial details, but it's a matter of taking them one step further so they're tidy and they tie back into the residential components that we've got going. We've introduced a few elements of timber around, the polished concrete floors. So the materiality and the texture's reasonably rich. It's not too austere. Still on the same level, nestled behind the old oak tree, is another bedroom which has a great mix of views and privacy. The upstairs tower above the old shop contains two more bedrooms, one of which is currently an office. This level also contains one of the building's unfinished aspects. So this was gonna be a deck, and it's not a deck yet. Is it a budget thing? Yeah, it was a budget thing. At time of tender when the tenders came in a bit high and the estimates, we went through a lot of options with Justin and identified areas where we could reduce cost for him. But to Justin's credit, he's kept with pretty much the whole of the intent of the design and kept with some premium materials. One thing we did defer just to save some money was the deck up here. Right. Now, you've worked really hard to keep this thing on budget for Justin. I mean, really hard, haven't you, to be fair? Yeah, we have. Look, I mean, the tenders came in at about 2500 a square metre, um, and that's a pretty good rate, really, you know, for a building in Auckland. There have been cost increases, but I think we've managed to keep it to a reasonable rate. We got a good result. The budget hasn't quite stretched to making the lower workshop useable yet. The space for an eventual vehicle hoist is covered in bolted-down steel. Client Justin is now at the end of a six-year process which has seen his site transformed. It was a big dream. So, do you think you've achieved everything you set out to do with this building? Oh, definitely, definitely. I don't think anyone can be disappointed in his efforts. He's certainly worked 100% on putting this together and day and night more than anyone could ever ask. There's more going on behind the scenes than I'll ever, ever know. In fact, a wander round this building reveals some delicious details ` thoughtful stuff that Matt's kept on the plans despite those budget constraints. I have two things that I really really like. One of them is these slit windows in the wall here which just give you a glimpse but privacy, and I think that's really clever. But also I love in the bathroom where the lights come on in that recessed soap area. It's just a beautiful little touch. He's got a very` an eye for detail. Look at every screw alignment how he wants it and won't take anything less. Sometimes just the little smaller things just add so much. And with a few months to decompress after the experience, Matt is enjoying his achievements. We've maximised the use of this site. It's one of the most successful parts of the project is actually achieving that. I come on to the site, and I think it's a really good use of the space. When you look at it from the street, I mean, it's pretty. Do you feel that? Yeah, I don't think it's an ugly building. It's a reasonably pretty building. It's a nice play between what happens on New North Road, where it's actually quite sympathetic with the scale of the other buildings down the street, and there's a nice surprise when you go down Sandringham Road and see the whole four storeys and it sitting above the ground. And, um, it's quite a different building from the back there. I enjoy using cantilever, because it gives the building a bit of tension. In a way, you have to think about how the building's being held up. We love playing with little floating structures, and that's what we've done down here in the basement, where it floats out over the railway tracks, and then illuminated at night, it becomes this little floating white box, so it, sort of, changes between day and night. The other favourite thing is probably the views and the way that the spaces work with those views. And I really enjoy that. For me, walking around the building is half my time sitting here looking out more than in, to be honest. When you come down the side of the building and you come to that gap between the two which has got the glass and the steel and then there's the roughcast exterior of the old shop building all together, and it's a courtyard area and it's the ponga at the end saying, 'Come look at me.' It is a lovely place. The little courtyard's worked out quite well. We took pains to leave that texture of the existing building, but it's nice and a juxtaposition with the new concrete works. That's probably one of the most pleasurable little moments. It always is. When you're dealing with old buildings, that mix between the old and the new's really nice thing. There's one thing for me. I get up here, and I just want to screen out that house to the neighbours. I'm trying to get more greenery on that side so we don't see that. I can see there's still improvement to be done on that side, but just over time it's gonna happen. It's been long, complex and, let's face it, in parts difficult. Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Yeah, 'course it was. It has been a long process, and it has been quite a hard process, this build. Um, but then you turn up on a day like today, and the sun's shining, and the cladding's glinting, and, you know, you've got a happy client, and, you know, of course it is. All this started from a need for space when that small garage dug beneath Justin's old villa just wasn't working any more. The new garage is quite a contrast. I'm very happy that the garage works. It was one of the most important things, and it's the start of the project. Justin and I mapped it out in my old warehouse, and we taped it up to see if we could get the cars to work. I was always concerned it was gonna be a bit tight. And it is. You gotta be careful, but we've got a lot of space down there for cars, and we have got decent manoeuvring area, and for Kingsland, that's a luxury, so I'm really happy that that's worked out. Walking in this morning, for me, and seeing the cars in the garage, I suddenly went, 'Oh my God, it's working here. The garage works.' Yeah, it's luxury down there, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So I want one. All the texture of the cars and the posters and the bits and pieces that he's accumulated over the years, uh, to me really works. You know, it's fantastic. Do you think he'll be grateful enough to let you work in it? Do you think he'll be grateful enough to let you work in it? (CHUCKLES) Well, my car's down there. That's a start. So after two years of excavating, building and finishing, Justin has an enviable workshop. Matt has somewhere to keep his car, and most importantly, that friendship has endured. You've worked together over the last couple of years, basically, through the build process. How was that for you two together? We've had no trouble working together, I think. There's been an element of trust between me and Justin, which has worked well. Full credit to Matt. You know, I couldn't have a better person to share everything, the whole process and along with the pain that went with it, but, uh, which is also part of the building process. He gives his whole heart and soul. Full credit to him. He's` You know, you'd never be disappointed with whatever he does 100%. So architect Matt Brew can breathe a sigh of relief. And sitting here with the both of them, I can say it really is a fantastic space. Two great mates started out on an optimistic project ` to squeeze every last usable inch out of a difficult site, and it proved more difficult than they imagined. As an architect, Matt Brew went over and above for his mate Justin but also for the building. I said at the start this building would change the face of Kingsland, and it has. And it stands as a testament to their perseverance and to their friendship. And they can both be very very proud of it.