Trends New Zealand Trends Volume 32 No 1 New Zealand | Page 58

Above: Largely untouched apart
from their expanded inter-room
connections, the front living room
and adjoining dining room now
enjoy vistas out to the rear of the
reworked home.
Facing page: Natural light floods
the new stairwell adding to the airy,
open ambience of the existing and
reinvented living spaces. The new
‘courtyard’ room is to the left.

It’s one thing to add function and interior
space to a traditional home but quite another to
do so without ruffling the original aesthetic.
On this project, by architect Peter Willett,
the existing house, built in the early 1900s, had
undergone several unsympathetic renovations.
The owners asked Willett to remove this design
clutter and bring light to the dark interior spaces
while connecting the front living and dining
spaces to the rear of the home and back garden.
“They also required additional bedrooms
and a modest flat over a new two-car garage
in place of the existing single garage. All of this

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was to be done without disturbing the look and
scale of the original architecture.
“We took the house back to its original base,
removing the ill-considered earlier renovations,
and opened up the rear in sympathy with the
fabric of the original design. For example, the
veranda was extended around to the back.”
To achieve front to back indoor connections
and bring light into the interior, Willett dramatically reconfigured the interiors. The front rooms
remain much as they were, with expanded
doorways both internally and to the outdoors.
However, the rear of the home was transformed.