Trends New Zealand Trends Volume 31 No 8 New Zealand | Page 20

Back to the
beginning
To update the interior of this traditional villa,
the architect scratched a 1980s remodel
and reverted to the original villa layout
Change for the sake of change isn’t
always the best reason to renovate. Most
of us also want an improvement on what
went before.
This traditional villa, built a century
ago, was remodelled in the 1980s, but
changes made during that renovation did
not suit the new owners who called in
architect Chris Holmes of CAAHT Studio
Architects.
“That earlier renovation removed the
central hallway and replaced it with walls
at 45° angles, which made it difficult to

place furniture,” Holmes says. “The house
was cut up into a lot of small spaces that
were quite awkward – the dining room
was particularly tight, measuring just
2.4m across.”
The architect says the owners wanted
a complete renovation that would maximise the existing footprint while retaining
the traditional villa character, as required
by a conservation overlay.
“A former lean-to that was built many
decades earlier was removed from the rear
of the house and replaced with a modern

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version, which is just 1m longer. So we
were only adding an extra 8.5m2 in total,
but it needed to work a lot better than the
existing layout.”
Holmes says he took his cue from
the original villa, gutting the interior to
reinstate the central hallway.
“In terms of efficiency, we couldn’t
beat the original villa layout, with its central axis and rooms off to the left and right.
These bedrooms receive plenty of natural
light, and there is a direct circulation route
from the front door to the living areas at