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, rough ground and ever-increasing budgets. This episode sees industry veteran Malcolm Walker working with a young family as they try to replace this old bungalow with an ultramodern concrete home. Copyright Able 2014 Making a call whether to renovate or build can be a tough one. This week, we're following the struggle to get a modern house built in a tightly controlled heritage zone, and the architect is Malcolm Walker. Malcolm Walker has concentrated his career on making houses that people love. A good house properly done ` apart from giving you comfort ` can organise you and make you feel good and make you relax and, you know, be sociable; a whole lot of things. So a good house is... is a good thing. His clients are looking to build their family home where they already live, in the Auckland neighbourhood of Grey Lynn. We love the street, we love the area,... ...the people. ...we love the people round here. They're fantastic, you know. And, um, we don't really want to move. Their current house is run-down, and renovating it will cost a fortune, so they either move out or the old house goes. Malcolm Walker lives in Grey Lynn as well and works nearby. After 30-plus years in the architecture business, he still gets excited about his job. It's just such a, um... a useful thing to do, and so, uh... and it's also exploratory. Every job's different; you deal with people; you make things, um, and that's in my nature ` I like people, I like making things. Um, and it's just such a complicated business, and so it's just every day's a new day. It's great. You can see Malcolm's thoughtful, practical touch in his buildings. A Malcolm Walker house, very simply, aims to be a good place to live. There's so much to know. You know, and as I get older, I get less interested in the fiddle of it. Cos the younger ones can put the effort into that, and then I get interested in the, sort of, bigger picture of the whole thing. Malcolm's latest project is in Grey Lynn, Auckland, on the site of this old bungalow that client Justine bought for a song back in the '90s. Now she and her partner, Daniel, have a couple of kids. They don't feel it is right for them, or healthy, for that matter. There's no insulation; um, the back deck's about to fall off; there's rot in the ceilings. There's pretty much black mould everywhere. The living space doesn't really work for us as a family. There's just too much work, and we've got rotten windows; the roof leaks ` you know, the list just goes on and on and on. Renovating the house would be more expensive than building new. So Justine and Daniel have turned to their much-admired architect, Malcolm. I love the way, um, the buildings that I have been in, they function. They work really really well for his, um... his clients. And, um, I just love the sense of space and, um, the, um, materials that he uses. And, you know, I've got friends who've` a couple of friends who've got houses, um, designed by him. I'm always quite, you know, blown away when I've gone into a house that he's designed. I go, 'Yay. This is exactly, you know, something that really excites me.' Yeah. Justine and Daniel want a home for themselves and their two kids, and they want it to be dry and eco-friendly. They want it to take advantage of the tree-lined setting. And as fans of modernist architecture, they want flat rooflines. And most of all, Daniel wants a secure garage where he can store his film props and his classic Volkswagen. With the seed sown, Malcolm, Justine and Daniel sat down together and dreamed this up. Malcolm's modernist design is made mostly from precast concrete panels. Among the slightly pitched rooflines is a tower, a lookout point to the park next door. At the back of the building, the living space is supersized. And there's a relationship between the cantilevered window box and the workshop studio, which is located is located to the rear of the all-important garage. It's an interesting design, but I can see Malcolm going to battle with the heritage planners to get it through. I'm meeting up with him on site to see where he's hoping to fit it all. Hello, Malcolm. Good morning. How are ya? I'm good. Good. This is the house that's coming off? It's going. It's not doing what we want to do. It's in poor condition, and it's not one of the great examples of, uh, urban architecture, I... (LAUGHS) It's not gorgeous, is it? They're trying to up the ante. Take me through how it fits on the section. The new place is a lot lower than this. We're coming in about level with the footpath here. Right. You walk straight off the street into the house, bedrooms at front, living at the back, and it steps down as it goes down the site. So we're looking into the park, we're looking back into the garden, which is why we've been negotiating to get this house as close to the road as we can without being too rude to the street. That's the game we play. Garaging's very important with this house. Daniel's got work vehicles and, sort of, collector cars and things. Um, so that's a major issue with the house. Around the back of the house, it seems there's plenty of room for development. So, looking at the back of the house here, it's pretty ugly and nasty, isn't it? It's not too good. Um, it might be dangerous, actually. Yeah. So once that's gone, where does it fit on the section here? Um, it's slightly further back into this backyard. And the trick's been trying to keep as much backyard as we can and get as much house as we can. Um, the formal sitting room, I suppose, is on this side, and the day living's on that side, so you get the sweep of all-day sun there, with a deck in the middle. Just further back a bit, we've got this little pop-up room that will look over top of all this vegetation and give you an outlook from the sides. So the focus of the house is that as soon as you've come through the bedrooms, the whole house starts to open up out into this broad, leafy, green, sunny area. It's almost tropical. It is. It's like a private little oasis. Yeah. Give me a time frame ` when is this is all gonna be done? Don't know. I mean, we don't know whether we can do it, you see ` that's the thing. So I think we will, it'll take time; I'd feel happy if we were allowed to do it by the end of the year. OK. It's not for the impatient, building. You've gotta be, uh, tenacious and, um, optimistic. Good luck. I hope the council's nice to you. Thank you very much. Oh, they're lovely people. (CHUCKLES) Cheers. I can't believe the cajones on these guys. They're basically asking the impossible of the town planners. They wanna knock down an old house in a heritage street and put up what is a modern concrete box. I mean, it's the heritage planner's nemesis. Tilt-slab concrete? Argh! Run screaming. They've got a fight on their hands. 1 I'm following the journey of Justine and Daniel, who have a design from architect Malcolm Walker that they want to build on their site in Grey Lynn, Central Auckland. After some soul-searching, they've decided to replace their family bungalow with something less damp and dark. Because it's treed on one side and right up to the neighbour on the other side, it's getting no sun into the rooms. Now, the couple aren't sure whether they'll be allow to build their design. It is the result of two years' work with their architect and designed to bring maximum light into their bottom-of-the-hill site. So this is the park here, so these windows are filtered by the trees. So while you've got a tree sitting in here, you can still get light in there and still get light in there. You can get light coming in there and in there, as well as into the rooms. So the rooms are getting light, and also the hallway gets light. Then you start to model it. You can see what you've got; you can play around with it and cut and chisel. You can see how these eaves'll work. So you're getting the morning sun in there, and in the afternoons it's coming in through this little strip down the middle. It's a clever design, but it's also at odds with the neighbourhood. Justine and Daniel live in a central-city heritage zone. It's difficult to get permission to alter buildings, let alone get rid of them and build new, even if they're unremarkable ones. Six months after they'd hoped to begin the project, Justine and Daniel are still ploughing through red tape. They got all the neighbours to sign off on it. They're all in agreeance of what we're gonna build. They've been fantastic, um, and really supportive. < Um, there is a house designed by Malcolm next door, which, um, definitely helps the situation. So what's stopping you at the moment? I think there's a few different,... uh, opinions being thrown around out there about what should and what shouldn't be allowed to be built. The way that Justine and Malcolm and myself see it is that we're actually investing in the heritage of the future rather than trying to restore the heritage that exists. You know, there's not really much to save here, as you can see, so... It's... Basically, it's a falling down tumble-down old dump. Yeah, definitely. (CHUCKLES) It's taken us a while to make a decision to get rid of it. And if we can or not, we just have to wait and see. Hopefully, um... Hopefully, we can. If not, well, we have to rethink our... our plan. So, while the young family waits, Malcolm Walker is continuing with his other daily job ` putting pencil to paper in a different way. For almost 30 years, Malcolm Walker has been one of the country's top cartoonists, poking fun at politics, architecture and the politics of architecture. Cartooning's quite a negative thing, really. You know, it's a reactive thing ` and I am a bit, sort of, grumpy ` whereas architecture's a very positive thing. But they're quite similar in funny ways ` you're pulling in a whole lot of information, you know, uh, and then you're trying to, sort of, chop it and arrange it and make it simple. And there's quite a lot of architects that do do cartooning ` I've found that a lot of cartoonists have been architects ` but it is a similar process of distillation and working out what works and what doesn't. Just over the back fence, Malcolm's client is also at work. Daniel's an art director, so is used to working visually. During the process, he's involved the whole family in constructing mood books full of ideas they like for their new house. We need some more pictures of what your bedroom might look like. Why? So that we know exactly what it's gonna look like, so there's no little surprises. This is the second mood board that we've done, and, um, things have changed quite a lot since we started. It's easier to show somebody visually, um, a picture rather than them try and imagine what we're talking about, yeah. The look of the place is evolving quickly; the permissions process isn't. Um, we were hoping that resource consent was done in February, and now we're June, yeah. A bit frustrating. And there's nothing really we can do about it. At the top of Daniel's wish list is a garage studio to store and work on his film projects. Trouble is, it's the very thing causing council concern. At the moment, the garage is the thing they're pinpointing, um, saying that they don't want, um, a big garage door on the street. There are other garage doors on the street in our street, and we have already got a garage, but they are suggesting that maybe we do a carport. Yeah, there's a few things. There's the rain ` um, the direction that the carport would sit, the rain would just fill the garage floor up with water. I wouldn't be able to store or make or do any projects for work or anything, which, you know... which is really important to my job. And if I had to pay storage, um, I probably wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. So, hopefully, we might be allowed a garage. A month later, and things have taken a step backwards. The removal of the bungalow has met resistance from heritage activists, and the new design is also having trouble getting approval by council. Architect Malcolm Walker and his team are having to fight on two fronts. We don't know where we are. There's a lot of toing and froing. It's very bureaucratic, and it's incredibly frustrating. How long is gonna take to resolve? Will it resolve? We don't know. Um, everyone's so careful. Pulling buildings down is a very fraught business in Auckland and particularly in a zone like this. We just can't be certain. We can't carry on with our drawings until we've got consent. Worst-case scenario ` could this fall over? Yes. Worst-case scenario is they don't let us pull the building down. Um, the next worst case is we can pull the building down and we can build the building; we get severely compromised, probably on the style of the house and where the garage goes, which is going to be the main issue. And the... The site's so restrictive that to move the garage would utterly compromise the house and the principles of what the house is built around. And so I guess we've gotta go back to scratch and end up with an inferior building and not improve the street at all. It's an ongoing thing, Dan and Justine are waiting, so how long can they expect? You don't know. You know, and anything can crop up, and objections may come in, we may have to notify it ` we just don't know. And it's pissing me off. Yeah. (CHUCKLES) You can see that. > Three months later, and after a fair bit of back and forth, there's an answer from the council. Gidday, mate. Good to see ya. Yeah, and you. I hear you've had some news. Yes, we've got consent to not only pull the old house down, but build a new one, so we're ready to go. Mm. That's quite good. Well, yeah. It's been a bit of a journey, so, um, very happy about that. So now we're just going as fast as we can. At one stage, it seemed the whole thing was gonna fall over, didn't it? We didn't know. And in the end, it came back to the car. Councils don't like cars. Even though they eviscerate the city and fill gullies up with motorways and things, we can't put a garage even a metre closer to the street. It's a very strange aesthetic. And that's where it came back to. Malcolm has modified his design to move the garage a metre further back on to the property. It means they'll lose some backyard space, but Justine and Daniel will get to build. So, basically, this is where you've gone back a metre. This was the initial proposal, and as you can see, we've crowded the garage right up to the street. Now, to maintain it as a garage, we've been asked to pull it back a metre, just to make it less visible from the street. They lose a metre out of their backyard. I've got a feeling that it's not gonna make much visual difference to the street at all, so, to our way of thinking, it's compromise, but it still contravenes the setback, so we have got quite a concession out of council. On the heritage side of things, Malcolm has somehow been able to prove that his new design will fit in with the street's existing buildings. Photographs of the street; how we see it fitting in; how our drawings match; a completely unrelated building supplied by council to say that it should look like this and fit in with this and it's not even in the same street. So you've got a team that's working on this. Yes. There's really three of us on this one. Me and Richard are, sort of, mainly involved in the design, and Gabrielle also, but Richard and I work things through. Then Richard and Gabrielle work together getting technical things, and I'm running the design of it. I can't do the computer drawings. I do all my stuff with pencil and pens and pointing. They hate me ` computers just haemorrhage when they see me coming. Well, it's been a long wait, but after two years, Malcolm Walker's designs for Dan and Justine's house have finally been given the green light. I'm told it'll go up quickly, being made of tilt-slab concrete, and it's gonna be interesting to see what it looks like here amongst the Hakanoa heritage homes. 1 It's been two years of waiting for Justine, Daniel and their two daughters, but the council consent is finally through and they're able to replace their old bungalow in Central Auckland with this modernist-style home made of concrete and designed by renowned architect Malcolm Walker. Over at Malcolm's office, things are all go with the next round of drawings, as building is imminent, which means Justine and Daniel need to move out of the house that's served them for 12 years and face the realities of renting and funding a house build at the same time. This one here. There's still the sticky question of what to do with the existing house. Luckily, heritage hunter and developer Carla has gotten wind of the house and has bought it as is, where is. Her intention is to move it to a site in nearby Kingsland. And as the fake brick cladding comes off, it's revealed that this house is made of heart rimu ` quite a score for its new owners. The, uh, cladding that was on the house actually saved the house, preserved it, yeah, really really well. It's gorgeous. It would be a shame to see it go. With a perfect lick of paint a bit of fluffing to it... I say a little bit of fluffing, but there's actually quite a fair bit to be done. It's, uh, exciting/daunting. The whole process is really big. So I guess, um, yeah, it is ` it's a bloody great challenge, and, you know, why not? I'd rather save this than see it, you know, in bits of wood and in back of a truck. With its asbestos skin removed, this old bungalow already has a new lease of life. It's now empty, and all that remains is to move the thing. Two weeks later, the house has been sawn in half and is ready to be moved. It's an extraordinary process. In suburbia at 2 o'clock in the morning, these two big trucks with lights and that sort of thing, they just pick it up, cut it, slice it and take it away. It's amazing. Some have fought to keep this old house, and some can't wait for the new design, but all the neighbours are out tonight to see the changing face of the street. So, you know, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, and your neighbours are out on the street. Everyone seems pretty chirpy. Yeah, they're pretty happy about it. Well, hopefully, they've got a nice house going in across the road... (LAUGHS) instead of an old one. After clearing the trees, the house is manoeuvred on to the narrow street and up the hill, after which it gets some pace up. It takes another four hours to get the old house into its new place, where it's ready to be renovated and put on the market for 700 grand. Three months later, working drawings are done, and excavation is underway. Mark Conway is the head builder here on site, and he's been hand-picked by Malcolm. Mark is the, um... the builder from heaven. He's very organised, very competent, a really nice person, but thinks his way through it. I first met him, we had a very difficult job, and he just sorted it all out and did a beautiful job of it. And with these things, you all need to work together. You need to all be onside and all be working to the same thing. The budget's tight, so we keep analysing what we're doing all the time. And it's not that serial thing ` we're all on the same plain, and that's the joy of it, really. Today Mark's getting the levels right as quickly as possible to allow for the manufacture of the 18 precast concrete panels that will make up the form of this Malcolm Walker house. They won't start building the panels till they know that the foundations are as drawn. We don't know if the foundations will be as drawn, as, you know, the ground may be, uh, suspect in places, so we may have to make it a bit deeper. The youngest of the clients are here today, along with Mum and Dad, to see the beginning of their new home. Yeah, they're building a house. They're starting building our new house. Yeah. What does it feel like to come on to the site? Here it is, the digger's been going, they're excavating it, and it's really underway. It's wicked. And, um, I keep thinking, 'Wow. Actually in possibly three months or 12` even less ` 'maybe 10 weeks, we might even have walls up.' Across town three months later, those walls are almost ready, being poured out of concrete in an all-weather facility. As the panels will be left raw in the final design, the consistency of their finish is extremely important. It's a quick and cost-effective way to build, with a precision system of layering, providing strength, insulation and thermodynamics. The process of building insulated precast panels starts with setting up your formwork, then placing a layer of mesh into the form, then pouring generally 50mm to 70mm of concrete... over that mesh. Then we place a layer of polystyrene ` either expanded or extruded, depending on the job. They we put our structural reinforcing into the panel and pour backing concrete into that, and generally anywhere between 120mm up to 200mm of concrete. The concrete factory puts the finishing touches on the final panels, which will be delivered as soon as the site's ready. A week later, the foundations are down, and a few brick retaining walls are in place. It'll be up to the concrete panels to provide most of the building's strength as well as its shape. In just two days, they'll be in, and the house will have its form. It must be massively stressful. These panels arrive ` they have to be millimetre perfect. Mark has had to put these footings in in storms and rain and everything, and they've gotta be millimetre straight as well. How hard is it? Really hard. I wouldn't do it. There's a lot of digging of mud out, cos we had terrible weather. So he's forever working on a really mucky level of shovelling clay, and also in this, sort of, um, super-accurate setting out thing in the middle of it all. So it's interesting. Are you hard up to it? Yip. On this end, the other end's off 5 mil. but... Sort you out. Yeah, it's not bad. We checked it, the engineers and the fabricators have ` we're all swapping notes, so you do all you can. And now we just see if it works or not. (LAUGHS) Yes, of course, architecture's all about suck it and see. (LAUGHS) Well, every job's different. You know, um, if there was a formula, we wouldn't be doing it, so, uh, yeah. This is still exciting to you? This is it. This is when it comes out of the ground. This is when your... something you did two years ago starts to, sort of... You know. You say, 'Oh yeah.' Things you'd forgotten, well, you think, 'Ooh, yeah, we did that. That's all right.' It's the fun of building, the joy of it. The joy of the piece. After two and a half years of waiting, this seems like an amazingly short period of time to make such a big leap. These reinforced insulated grey slabs are the stars of the show today, which is a big one for Dan. He's had a long wait to see his dreams made concrete. Yeah, finally, we get to see form on that empty site, you know. By Friday, I think we'll be able to walk around all the rooms, you know, and see all the spaces, which is probably the most exciting thing. I just hope that no one breaks in there and spray-paints all the inside of my walls. Cos that could happen. Yeah. Cos we're not painting them. Right. Mm. We're not plastering them, so, yeah. Yeah, hopefully it's OK. Daniel may sound overly cautious, but this house design has already attracted some unwanted attention. Ever since the removal of the bungalow, the site has been held up by critics and the media as an example of the destruction of inner-city heritage, and it's turned into a bit of a tough ride for the young family. It grew. It started small, and it got bigger, and then suddenly, we were being named and... Yeah. > ...vilified and, you know, all that, so, um, it, sort of, reached its crescendo and, sort of... It went away. > And it'll probably come back again at the end, probably, when there'll be some, um... You know, people always have really strong opinions about anything that's new or different or... And I'm sure it will, but that's actually up` Everyone's got their own opinions. I think a lot of people mistake style for heritage. What was here wasn't terribly successful, just as a house and also visually, and I think... I can't promise anything, but we've been careful about what we're putting back in here. If you build something well and carefully and thoughtfully, you will have heritage. You know, that's... If it works well, heritage is time, and so good building is good heritage. That's all I can say to it. Well, already the name-calling has started. One I've heard bandied about is Hakanoa shopping mall. People can be cruel, people can be anti-progress, but people can also build bloody great concrete boxes that don't work. And which set of people are gonna be right here? Truly, I don't know. 1 When Daniel and Justine hired Malcolm Walker to design them a house, they doubted whether they'd be allowed to build it. But with the council battles over, the new house is growing quickly out of the ground, thanks largely to the fact that it's made out of precast concrete. By August 2012, work is rocking along on site, with the form of the building having come up in just two short days. Still, there's plenty of work to be done, so to cut costs, client Daniel is pitching in. I volunteered myself cos I knew it'd be shit and it'd take them ages and it'd probably be expensive. Daniel's given himself the worst job on site for sure, digging out the mud deposited beneath the concrete panels by recent heavy weather. Yeah, I'm just digging it down the footing. Then we can seal the back of the wall and put the overflow pipe in and seal up the back of the wall. It'll be sweet. There's only, uh, 395 walls to go (!) Hard graft, eh, Dan? Glad you're doing it and not me. The actual building, I think, is a really` gonna be a really nice space. You can almost get the feel of some of the living spaces now, and they're gonna be nice places to be. There's so much work to come. It'll slow down and get detailed. There is a lot of detail in this. You don't see it yet, but there is a lot of detail in it, so that will make it a lot more complicated, um, and it'll definitely slow it down. So after a hiss and a roar, things are now changing slowly from month to month. In September, more concrete arrives on site. The building is contrasting more and more with its neighbours. Also, the all-important garage floor is poured. INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS After another month passes, I've come to site to check out the progress with Daniel. For the first time, I'm able to see how the living spaces are going to flow. This is a bedroom. I love this window. It's just beautiful, isn't it? There's lots happening to that yet. Just one pane of glass in there, or...? Yeah, we haven't decided if it's opening or not yet. Right. Cos teenage daughters eventually, and, uh, getting out. But... Yeah. So this is another bedroom? So this'll be Frankie's bedroom. Right. Master bedroom. Um, built-in wardrobe and the little en suite. And that's, uh, floor-to-ceiling glass with louvres down the side, which is a huge panel of glass. Yeah. So, this is the kitchen and this is a drop ceiling, um, because it's the underneath of the tower. And then this amazing space here, which is just huge. It's fantastic. The house is settled into its environment really well. Yeah. And how pleased are you and Justine with Malcolm? Oh, yeah, pretty pleased. BOTH LAUGH Yeah, we're OK (!) Yeah, no, we knew ` we knew who we're using. Daniel might be taking it all in his stride, but for me, this place is finally starting to sing. When you walk around, there's such a sense of pleasure you get from the place. The concrete, instead of being oppressive and cold and sort of harsh, frames such beautiful vistas. And it feels big and strong and interesting and a lot of fun. I really enjoy coming here, and I think it's a collaboration between Malcolm and Dan and Justine, who are, with their ideas, working together and making something really special together. It's a neat place to be. Probably the quirkiest aspect of this design is Daniel's idea. He wants a study room in the form of a tower. Not a full second story ` more like a crow's nest or a lookout point, which architecturally defines the shape of the final house and gives it an interesting symmetry. Today, with the floors down, Daniel's able to check out the view from the tower level for the first time. It's almost exactly the same as the other house. (CHUCKLES) It's pretty close. And as architect and neighbour, Malcolm's here too, to share in the joy of the build. It's pretty green. It's amazing how much tree you can see. I always keep an eye on it. I love seeing things being built, and often, weekends are good, cos there's no one here and you can walk through and you look at the generality of it. If you're there with the builder, you talk about connections and the technical part, cos really, the big picture's what you start with, and that's what you end up with. But there are still some surprises. To make the rear of the house flow to the back garden, more excavation's required. And what would we do along the fence line? Retain it? I'd just shape it. You don't want a whole series of retaining walls. This is all extra ` this is not a cost that we thought we were gonna have to spend, so, uh... We'll be digging it. You've got a shovel. I've got a shovel and a wheelbarrow ` we'll be right. > So, with a few extra costs to look forward to, Malcolm, project-architect Richard and clients Justine and Daniel sit down for a first lunch and to reflect on how the house might be lived in. Hey, cheers. Cheers. Cheers, everyone. Yay. It's like a catch-up with a mate. Spent half the time talking about the house and the rest of the time talking about other stuff. The tower's gonna be pretty cool. You draw things, you get an idea of what they're gonna be like. But you never know how they're going to sing and how people will use them. It's gonna be interesting to see what makes it into this house from the other houses we've lived in. Everyone thinks you're gonna change their ways when they move into a new house, and you don't. Never tidy up for an architect, cos I'll get an idea what people do and how they live, and then you can fit that to them. Cos all these people wanting minimalist houses, and you go back and they're full of... These sorts of things of just all meeting and chatting and talking socially do influence the way you read or understand someone and how they're gonna use the house. I think this feels like a ship sort of sailing into the garden. Well, it's got a direction to it, this house. Yeah. I love this end of the house. I think it's fantastic. I always though it was gonna be a little bit big, but, um... but no, it's great. It's amazing. It's definitely gonna be a good space to bring up a family. I think we're really lucky, you know? As the weeks roll into months and yet another year comes to a close, the Hakanoa St house takes shape little by little. Finally, Daniel's dream garage space is defined, and the modernist flat roof structures are in place, as are the extensive panels of small, high windows that get light between all those concrete panels. Now we're really starting to see the design take shape, with only a little more work to do before the roof's completely on. And when it is, the traditional roof shout celebrations are called for. Justine and Daniel get their first taste of entertaining in this voluminous space. Yeah, we get around to having our first little gathering at the house, which is good. It's exciting. I feel pretty lucky ` yeah, pretty lucky that I'm doing this and that we're gonna be living here soon. But the building might not be finished as soon as Daniel would like, with the twin cost of rental accommodation and building taking a toll. Rent's expensive, and we're building a house here, and we can't be paying for both, pretty much. So as it stands, builder Mark may soon find himself sharing the building site with his clients. Our plan is to move into our, sort of, little studio space and maybe the garage. It should be very close to being finished. And if not, we'll just make do and live in that space while they finish it off. I think it'll be fine, you know. We know we're moving into something that's a lot better than we've ever had ever before, so, you know, what's a couple of months? Two months later, the building is now fully enclosed and watertight. However, there's been a hold-up. Justine and Daniel now want wooden sarking as their roof lining, which will mean they'll spend more time and money on the build. Done all the outside eave and soffit sarking and we're inside now, so we've got another couple of weeks of that. So this stuff we're putting up here is something that Malcolm uses quite often. He likes to use the bansome wood face to add texture and depth to the... to the ceilings and bay windows that we often do. Yeah, it's a nice feature, I think. There was always a thought that they would like sarking. They watched the budget and feel that they can extend themselves to sarking these ceilings. As I say, there's another two or three weeks involved in that. Yeah, it extends it out. It extends the cost. I'm sure it's gonna be worthwhile in the end. The end's still a while away, but it turns out moving day's quite close. It's not time to move in, but it's their choice, cos they're paying a lot of rent where they are at the moment, and they feel, um, they'd be happy to move into the studio and the garage here while the last few subbies, you know, finish off and get out of here. So, um, it should be a little bit interesting to have them on site, but I think we'll be fine. And three weeks later, that's just what Daniel and Justine are doing. After 14 months in their rental property, they're saying goodbye and will be attempting to fit all their stuff into a small part of their new home. Yeah, so we're gonna move from here today into the garage and the studio, and we'll probably be in there for about six weeks. On site, their house is still a long way from a dream home. There are new details ` the roof sarking's up and the flooring's down ` but as a place to live, it's missing the basics. We haven't got any water on yet. We don't have any gas. Um, we'll be having showers elsewhere, and it's gonna be an interesting six weeks. Still, rough edges and all, the beauty of this house becomes clearer with every visit. And Daniel's even gone so far as to add some vibrancy with a duck-egg-blue garage floor. Yeah, it's good to get a bit of colour into the house. Can't wait to put the rest in now. I get the feeling Daniel might let loose with colour in this house, but not today ` he has a truckload and two storage units worth of boxes to deal with. Oh, there's a lot, so it'll be interesting to see how much space we actually fill up today. The girls sleep in here, and then we're just gonna pile it up with boxes and pile up in there. But you're actually gonna sleep in here? Maybe. We'll see how we go. Really? (LAUGHS) I dunno. We'll see how we go. It'll be sweet. It's not supposed to rain all day. Hopefully. And as the heavens open, the shift goes on. WHIMSICAL MUSIC After a couple of hours of heavy lifting, Daniel and Justine's new home is starting to fill up, and this is just the beginning. Yeah, it's all good. We've got another half a truckload coming, so that's gonna be very interesting. Be good. We have to get rid of some stuff now. Well, that's the start of it. There's still more boxes to come, but basically, they're in. They're estimating another six weeks before the house is finished. It's been a hell of a long wait, but hopefully, very soon. 1 Malcolm Walker has been bringing to life a design for a modern concrete home in Grey Lynn, Auckland. His clients, Justine and Daniel, wanted a sturdy, healthy home for themselves and their two daughters, as well as somewhere to keep their classic cars and work gear. The heritage nature of the street and their desire for a large garage meant this almost didn't get off the ground, but two years ago, they finally removed their old bungalow. From here, the site was excavated, and concrete panels came in to define the form of this low-slung modernist home. The building team have meticulously detailed this place, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the finished house fits into its surroundings. It's now February 2014. The house has been complete for several months, and it cuts an impressive form on the landscape. The full width of the site is utilised by the all-important garage and house forms. And as I meet Malcolm out front, I see the classic villa-style layout with long central hallway and rooms branching off. The front bedroom keeps a connection with the street, but the rest of the house is in a world of its own, a world of shining concrete and beautiful wood. Next down the hallway is the main bathroom and the second kids' room, which Daniel has splashed with bright, muted, unusual colours. Opposite, the master bedroom brings the outside in thanks to a large picture window, the skylights providing ever-changing illumination. And the stairs next to it lead to Daniel's pillbox-style tower. The rest of the house is hunkered down a bit, and so to have a break is quite nice. Yeah, this is lifted up and away, isn't it? Lit and airy. Look at these trees! I mean, you know, there's not a lot of sites that will give you this. There's something nice about a short and long view, if you get those two together. Who knew you were that clever? Some of it's an accidental thing. Oh, is it? (LAUGHS) Pure chance. (LAUGHS) The spaces at the street side of the house are modest and compact to allow for the square metreage to be used up at the living end of the house, and use it they have. Wow. At this point, the house explodes out into a large kitchen and dining area. The industrial concrete bench was poured on site and is a social centrepiece to this family orientated, practical and beautiful space. A cantilevered window box with seating puts you amongst the trees, with more skylights accentuating the high ceilings. Yeah, I like the light sources we're getting out of it. So you come into this volume and you get all this bits and pieces happening. On the other side of the space is the lounge, a more formal space with precast concrete fireplace and another take on the window-box seating arrangement. The wooden sarking in the ceilings carries from the outside in, and as a last-minute addition it might have been costly, but it was worth every cent. The industrial design elements and vintage furniture go beautifully in this space and help it feel like a house to be lived in rather than a show home. The backyard is definitely smaller, but the outdoor/indoor interplay means you hardly notice it, and the excavation makes the house sit snugly inside the landscape. It's a world away from what was here before. Personally, I like the fact that you've managed to put the house into the greenery itself, so that what you used to be able to observe from the house is now part of the house, which I think that's very clever. It's a really simple move, isn't it? We just dropped the house a metre and a half from where it was. It was on sticks before. You went up, and you were sort of hovering up above the ground. Now we've pulled it down on to the ground. And it just makes a huge difference to any house that you can, I think, connect to the ground. Hunkered down, low and square, this house is a triumph, but a long road for Daniel. You've survived it, and here is this beautiful home. I mean, it must be terrific. Yeah, no, it's good. Good. Yeah, there's nothing else you can say when it's` Yeah. ...pretty much exactly what you were hoping for. It's a healthy, dry environment with good airflow, and it's a perfect family house, really. It's modern and made of concrete, and you think it'd be hard as nails. It's actually really warm and still and gentle inside. It's lovely. Yeah, no, it's really good. All the spaces work for a family, and, um, yeah, that took a lot of planning and a lot of figuring out, but that's why we hired Malcolm, so yeah. He knows us and he knows our family, and he knows the stuff we like to do, so, yeah, it's good. It's great. And now Daniel, Justine and the girls are home again, and the long wait is over. But it's a process that everyone seems to have enjoyed. What were Justine and Dan like as clients? They were terrific. Yeah? They were focused; they knew what they wanted; very realistic, but had a... had a vision, and that's the sort you need. You know, you need people that, um, give you something to work with. No, they were great. And they're nice people, so you've got a good personal relationship as well as a professional one. And for the clients, working with their favourite NZ architect was a dream come true. You loved Malcolm's other houses, so how does this compare? We love it more, cos it's our own. < Yeah. But... BOTH: It's got all the elements... ...of everything we like from his architecture. Malcolm's stuff is about his spaces he creates. It's way better than we thought, though, isn't it, really. I remember when the walls went up, 'Ooh, it's small.' With all the windows and everything, we were, like, 'Wow, the spaces are amazing.' How thrilled are you with Malcolm? Really thrilled. Yeah. He pops in lots. It's great. He brings all sorts of people through, yeah. So the question I started with was renovate or rebuild? By building, these guys have something brand new, better and probably for less cost than renovating that old bungalow. We would've done it if the heritage people had said, 'Oh, no, you have to keep your house,' but I think they realised, you know, what we were dealing with. And I don't think any one of them would have spent the money to try and save what we had sitting here, which was about to fall down. And I definitely think the house here is better than what used to be here. The house that was here wasn't heritage; it was a bit of a rogue house anyway. So we've kept the sort of scale and a few little bits and pieces. Do your best, and you think, 'This house will look comfortable and won't fight the neighbours.' I mean, heritage is... is a time thing, hopefully not a fashion thing. So it's fair to say that you like it. Oh, I love this house. I'm very proud of it. Yeah. Yeah. Good, eh, if you've spent so much time on it. You'd like to think you did. A neighbour said to us, 'Oh, look, I've gotta confess I was campaigning against you to not build, 'but I love it so much. Can you please tell me who the architect is and the builder, 'and can I please, please, please come and have a look?' And he walked in here and he was blown away. And I can see why. It's a large and surprising space back here, testament to Malcolm's vision. What would you say to this guy? Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for making it really good. Oh, thank you. Thanks for not making us not build. I've been doing it for 30 years, and I'm still excited by it, so... Yeah. It's addictive. So while the wait might have been agonising, the build was an enjoyable process for all. Not everyone can say that on this series, and the results reflect this good-hearted collaboration. They say that if you're gonna build something, it has to improve on what was here before. Now, it hasn't been easy, but Dan, Justine and architect Malcolm Walker have delivered on what they wanted to do here ` they've built a heritage home for the future. It's connected to nature, it's grounded, and it's filled with light. And it's also filled with a family and lots of love. Happiness at last here at Hakanoa. GENTLE MUSIC Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2014