Renovation no, redesign yes

A double-height void and large windows create a sense of space and light in the living area.

Antique furniture adds warmth and character to the modern interior. In the area under the stairs, a 19th century Dutch chair sits beside a reproduction piece from Alsace that is over a century old.

The glass behind the bath can be made transparent or opaque at the flick of a switch, providing picturesque views or privacy.

A collection of tea cups takes pride of place in the pantry.

The main bedroom has bush and harbour views.

The kitchen cabinets and flooring are American white oak. A sliding door at one end of the room opens on to the original deck.

The welcoming entry is reflected in a vintage mirror.

Both keen readers, the owners opted for a library rather than a media room. The shelves hold books, music and models of classic aeroplanes.

The mezzanine above the main living area offers views of Otago Harbour.

The sitting room on the top level has sliding windows facing the Town Belt.

The garage, cantilevered over a steep bank, required a considerable amount of engineering.

One thing led to another when a Dunedin couple thought about gaining more living space. Kim Dungey reports.

What started out as a modest renovation snowballed into almost a full rebuild for the owners of one Dunedin property.

Having decided their 1970s home was not quite large enough for them, the local doctor and lawyer started looking for another house to buy.

But after failing to find anything to match the views, privacy and convenience of their location near the Town Belt, they turned to Brent Alexander of The Design Studio to reconfigure the existing layout.

The two-storey property, which included a basement flat, wasn’t ‘‘too bad’’, one of them explains.

However, it lacked the thermal qualities of a new build and had some quirky features, including an area under the house that they could drive through, ‘‘kind of like a bat cave’’.

While there was potential to expand into the large roof space, doing so would have required rebuilding much of the existing structure, Alexander adds.

‘‘And even then it would not have produced a truly functional area — the resulting space would still be constrained by low, sloping ceilings and the need for dormers.”

A renovation of this inner-city house turned into a major rebuild, with only the basement being retained. PHOTOS: KIM DUNGEY, BRENT ALEXANDER, PETER MCINTOSH

Instead, the drive-through area under the house was filled in, the basement strengthened and the concrete floor retained.

Everything above the foundation was demolished and in its place there’s a contemporary addition, clad in cedar and black aluminium.

The basement now includes the guest bedrooms and bathroom, along with a cosy library and a wine cellar.

On the middle floor, the open-plan kitchen-dining-living area opens via sliding doors on to the original deck surrounded by trees and birdlife.

A 5.2-m high ceiling creates a sense of space while large windows bring in views and light.

In contrast to these two levels, the top floor is more of a private retreat.

The main bedroom suite includes a deck at one end and a sitting room with floor-to-ceiling glass at the other.

Built in about 1970, the original house had a block foundation, weatherboard cladding and single-glazed aluminium windows.

In between are a large dressing room and an en suite with a bath cantilevered out over the bush.

Because the house is tall and reasonably difficult to access, a low maintenance cladding was called for — powder-coated aluminium fitted the bill as it doesn’t need to be painted.

High windows capture sunlight year-round and cedar louvres promote natural ventilation.

‘‘It’s essentially a new house so it’s built to very high thermal standards,’’ Alexander says. ‘‘The windows are very high spec ... and it’s packed full of insulation.’’

Cantilevering the garage over a steep, bush-clad bank in an otherwise unusable corner of the site was one of the architectural designer’s best ideas, one of the owners says.

Ideally, it would have had glass walls like the one in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he jokes, describing how the teen in the movie is winding back the odometer on his father’s rare Ferrari after a joyride, when the car falls off the jack and crashes through a full-length window into the woods below.

‘‘I thought a full wall of glass would be fine but neither the designer nor the engineer were similarly enthused.

‘‘Maybe they’d seen the movie as well ... ’’

There is, however, a barrier so they can’t easily drive right through.

The deck is one of the few original parts of the house that still exists.

Alexander says the garage — which was inspired by one built on the side of a cliff in Wellington — involved a massive amount of engineering.

‘‘There’s a network of beams, struts and big concrete foundations that extend well beyond its footprint.’’

While he wouldn’t always suggest such extensive home alterations, in this case it was justified because the Town Belt provided so much ‘‘amenity value’’.

‘‘It’s very private and wherever you look, there’s bush or a harbour view ... ’’

The project was an opportunity to convert an ordinary building into something special and to ‘‘fight against the challenges of the landscape’’.

‘‘We’d normally try to work with the landscape but in this case — and I’m referring to the garage mainly — we had to come up with an engineering solution and make it work.’’

The owners say despite Covid lockdowns and 18 months in a rental, the build was stress-free and this was largely due to their tradies, who included Steve Mowat Building, Stevenson and Williams as well as Design Windows.

They particularly like that the house has as much room as they need without ‘‘vast acres’’ of space they don’t use.

‘‘It’s just the right size and, being a modern build, it’s hugely comfortable.

‘‘There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t come across some aspect of it that makes us glad to be living here.’’