QUITE SIMPLE HOUSE

This house is the base camp for a retired dressMaker’s heroic planting mission. Our task was to make it simple and affordable. It owes a lot, but not everything, to the amusingly titled publication by the department of building and housing, ‘Simple House – Acceptable Solution’.

Before Europeans systematically felled most of the trees along the Kāpiti Coast and converted it to farms, this remarkable stretch of land beneath the Tararua Ranges was a vast wetland forest. It would be good to get it back, or at least some of it.  

Farming hasn’t been a roaring success on most of this land. While a lot it is very fertile, running stock on an old swamp is tricky in a good year, even if you drain it. Along with that, as the population has increased on the Coast so have land values and the pressure to sell up farm land for residential development. It could get worse from here. Or better. 

It depends who moves in. Our client has easily enough energy to replant native forests across the entire the lower North Island on her own – and she’s made a heroic start on this piece of land. If the Coast was filled with more retirees like her, all exiting the Big Smoke to live out their 5-acre dreams in a new Arcadian paradise, the future could be bright.  

The house is a monument to the creative energy of this retired wedding dress designer and her heroic planting mission, and a simple base camp for making it happen. The house wraps around an existing dune and encloses a sheltered courtyard. The wide verandahs make a pathway around the house from the most verdant vege patch in the sheltered gully behind it to the spectacular views of Kapiti Island on the knoll above it.  

Project: Quite Simple House
Year: 2014
Location: Kāpiti Coast
Type: New House
Design Lead: KebbellDaish Architects
Associate Architect: ArchitectureLab