Water mark
Lloyd Hartley transform a 60s box in Herne Bay
The owners have just returned from holiday and they couldn’t be happier to be home. With a tranquil view of Coxs Bay in Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour, and light filtered through pōhutukawa, their newly renovated home is a holiday in itself. Their brief to Ben Lloyd and Mike Hartley of Lloyd Hartley Architects was to create a beach house in the city. “It’s extremely peaceful,” says one of the owners. “Whatever day you’ve had, you can come here and forget about it.” The original home was a shapeless 1960s box with a block base and brick top. But if it had been bowled, existing usage rights on the south boundary would have been lost; a new footprint would have to retract into the section. Instead, Lloyd and Hartley re-imagined the top storey as a living area in the same shape as the original, only with an entirely new roof and structure, and openness to the view. An extension – containing the main bedroom and three children’s bedrooms – stretches to a sloping garden at the back of the property. Another significant move: the garage now sits under the new bedrooms and a space below the extension creates a covered entry court. (A media room and pool, meanwhile, are pending.) It’s the first family home for the owners and their three daughters – the couple had young twins when the project started and welcomed a third daughter along the way. Before embarking on the renovation, the family lived in the house for two years to get a feel for the place, and it then took more than four years of working with the architects to strike the right balance of what they wanted to achieve. The house was the first major project that Lloyd and Hartley took on after establishing their practice. “There were a few iterations that time allows you to work through,” says Lloyd. “It’s a collaborative process – we’re certainly not closed to our clients’ ideas because, ultimately, they live there.” The simple pitched-roof form belies the complexity of the alterations that took place. The house is reached down a long, straight driveway, which opens out into the entry court, a roomy pull-up space that borrows a restful view of the neighbour’s tennis court. “Now, if someone comes to see you, they are standing under shelter rather than waiting in the rain,” says Hartley. And it’s a lovely place to dwell. There’s welcome containment in the court’s timber-lined ceiling, while travertine tiles are carried through into the interior, the flush effect visible through full-height glass panels that wrap the gallery-like space where a commissioned sculpture stands. The full-height timber door strikes just the right note with a column of brass – it runs the height of the door, set into it, projecting at an elegant angle in the centre to form a handle. A slim light crosses the entire timber ceiling, stopping at the door. The main living area, which fringes the water, has become an open-plan kitchen, dining and living