Te Atatu House^W015

An existing building on Te Atatu Peninsula is extensively altered and a new semi-detached dwelling with garaging is created at the street side of the existing house that negotiates the transition from the street, through an enclosed garden courtyard with a joined bedroom. The scheme is designed to make use of the existing building where possible, while also acknowledging the need for a larger building footprint to accommodate the brief. The three semi-separated parts of the house are made to function together or as individual dwellings depending on circumstance, for the possibility of a multi-generational family home.

The materials include brick, canvas, and profiled metal in earthy and white tones that imitate the materiality and form of historical brickwork factories that operated around Te Atatu in the turn of the century. The new dwelling on the street front uses a pearly white colour to imitate the sheen of seashells that paved the roads of Te Atatu and that were mined from huge shell beds around the fringes of the peninsula. The new development is to make a mini industrial-esque cluster of simple forms, a kind of metaphorical factory for raising a large family in the suburbs.