Say what you like about the glories of villas, it’s a rare one that faces the right way. Though most, at least, have a sense of entry and a relationship to the street, along with a pronounced visual language that can range from charming to grand. In the case of this villa in Parnell, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, it was a stretch to say it even had that. “Villas have a really strong body language where they tell you to come in the front,” says architect Jack McKinney. “But the way the house was positioned on the site was pretty unusual, and the site is an eccentric shape. Everything was around the wrong way.”
At the end of a very pretty, very leafy cul-de-sac, close to a delightful reserve, and within walking distance of the CBD, the original house sat high above the street, at the top of a bank and behind two very lovely old pōhutukawa. It also had nine neighbours and no obvious entry. When McKinney first visited, you had to walk up the driveway, almost to the back of the house, then up a flight of stairs to the back door, before walking to the living areas at the front. “It was sort of mad, really,” he says.
Once you got there? A long living room overlooking the driveway struggled to get light, and the kitchen-dining area – architecturally renovated in the 1980s, and kind of charming – led out to an elevated deck. A bathroom occupied the western corner, with a bath in a window seat looking out to the garden. The garden faces south, and the neighbouring properties include four right on the western boundary. Downstairs, which was reached via a narrow, steep set of steps cutting into the middle of the hall, there were two low-ceilinged bedrooms and a bathroom.
McKinney is no stranger to villa renovations. He’s done numerous notable ones around central Tāmaki, including an ethereal extension to a Freemans Bay villa that won our first Best House Aotearoa back in 2021. Here, he sought to do the simplest possible thing, while creating every opportunity to access both light and privacy. “It’s quite a simple little scheme really,” he downplays. “It’s shaded, it’s tapering, it’s falling away, it’s dark and you’ve got nine neighbours. We’ve fixed those problems without doing anything too strident.”
McKinney’s redesign is a simple monopitched-roof extension that sits largely on the footprint of the previous version. But it’s taller, which creates a whole lot more head room and better circulation. His design demolished a lean-to and rickety deck, and filled in an existing parking bay below. Digging further into the hill, he created a double garage at ground level. On top of this is a new living area with a long skylight, which continues the line of the original hallway in a move McKinney describes as “just good manners, really”.
In between the original house and the extension, he slipped a new entry and staircase, which spans a series of half levels, connecting various elements of the house. From the new front door, it’s half a level down to the garage; half a level up again (on a separate set of steps) is a new laundry and powder room connecting to a guest bedroom and bathroom. There’s more head height this time, and some proper waterproofing. At the top of the main entrance stairway is the new kitchen-living-dining space. Around the corner and a few steps up again, you get to the original old house, now repurposed into bedrooms and bathrooms, including an expansive main bedroom suite.
To the wooden ornamentation of the villa, he added a series of tall, structural concrete-block fins that have their own distinct language. McKinney specified an elegant half-height 100mm-tall brick. He also asked the blocklayers to fill in the vertical gaps between the blocks, but to express the horizontal lines. One fin runs down the entire south-western side of the new wing; another runs up the staircase and holds the new living space. Another couple bookend the new terrace. They’re strong – a frame for the new space, filled in with lighter elements including shutters and window joinery. They connect visually with new rock walls by landscape designer Jared Lockhart that run through the garden. “There’s a language of block panels that are staggered around the house, and then the rock walls are staggered around the garden,” says McKinney.
Throughout, he paid close attention to how light would fall in the space, and how the house would connect to the garden. The new living area, instead of sitting up above the garden, runs out through tall doors to a paved courtyard. The new space has an airy 3.6-metre stud, in keeping with the expansive ceilings of the original villa, but the roofline is flat enough that the afternoon sun skates overhead and lands on the outdoor table. Inside, the generous skylight brings in afternoon light.
“But we still had this issue of facing the wrong way, and of having the neighbours, so we have various layers of visual barriers,” says McKinney. The living space is enveloped with a curtain. Behind that is a covered terrace, which is partially sheltered by the eave and framed by a wall of white shutters. The slight opening above allows light to filter down and reflect off the shutters. “There’s always light beyond the room on that side whether the shutters are open or shut. It’s a little machine for filtering light and views on that side.”
For that reason, the scheme is very pale and soft – a mixture of greys and white, with natural timber – though highly textured. There’s no painted plasterboard. Instead, there’s a rough-sawn timber ceiling, the blocks are rough and painted, and the paint has a sandy texture to it. The kitchen by IMO is pale grey powdercoated steel. “Wherever we could we were trying to build texture into it,” says McKinney. “It has softening elements. If it was all smooth and flat, it would be quite different.”
The result is tranquil, helped by the owner’s collection of art and furniture. “You just stare out at the garden and you’re not aware of the houses around you,” says McKinney. “It’s just extremely peaceful.”
1. Entrance
2. Bedroom
3. Bathroom
4. Ensuite
5. Kitchen
6. Dining
7. Living
8. Terrace
9. Garden
10. Spa
11. Laundry
12. Garage
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