The Wellington hills are dotted with an interesting variation of houses sitting amongst the vegetation. Quite often these houses are accompanied by a garage at the street. Many of which are robust concrete structures that lend themselves to supporting a small dwelling.

We have nicknamed this project Garage project as it sets a nice precedent for something that could be repeated throughout wellington and because the brewery at the bottom of the hill is called Garage Project. I quite enjoy the challenge of working with a small foot print, in this case we were able to make a very comfortable little house by having a high open pyramid ceiling over the whole footprint with the bathroom as the only enclosed room. The ceiling and walls are painted white while the Oak joinery offsets becoming the main architectural move, forming the kitchen, bench seat and continuing around to be the laundry room divider and bedroom wardrobe. Defining the lounge space from the bedroom. The joinery sits at 2.2m aligning with the wall to ceiling fold allowing a lot of light to pass across the spaces making it feel larger than it is. This is a simple but very effective space. Externally The clients and I worked equally as hard to create a crisp and beautify refined form through spouting shrouds rainscreen cladding and strict alignments.

The building sits sensitively into the surrounding house dotted hills as it mimics the existing buildings’ hipped roof and offers the occupants ample windows and deck space while balancing privacy.

The client built this house with help from his neighbor. His patience and dedication to slow and steady brought a high level of craft and consideration to all elements of the build of which I am truly thankful for and is evident in the result.