Home New Zealand – August 01, 2019

Groundfloor

Firstfloor

1

Design

notebook

Q&A with Hamish Stirrat

of Fabricate Architecture

Along with an open corridor, you

originally had multi-coloured fibre

cement panels on the cladding?

You always want to push your clients a

little bit – the original cladding concepts

were trying to tap into their craft, a sort

of pixelated mash-up. They looked at

the drawings and then said, ‘look at us,

we’re not extroverted eccentric artists’.

And I realised at that point I’d projected

onto them my own thoughts of what an

artist would be.

What was it like working with an

extended family as clients? The first

meeting was with the whole family, and

as we progressed the design it was Kirstin

and Dan. Once we finalised the design

they came back together. It was just a nice

design process and a really nice family

• everyone was in tune. Lynne brought
  cake out to the builders every day.

Is this kind of house becoming more

common? We’ve done five or six

• they make sense for a lot of reasons,
  particularly if the kids have kids. They’re
  intergenerational properties, but you
  need a bit of space – particularly as
  they get older.

You engaged the builder pretty early on?

“We had Rich on board from early on

• we really like to work that way now.
  There’s no point in getting a builder in
  once you’ve resolved the design. We were
  working with him on his place anyway
  and it’s exactly the same detailing – so it
  was easy for him to come up with a cost
  outline knowing it would have a high
  degree of accuracy.

What’s next for you? I’m taking a break

for a year – I’m closing the studio and

heading up north to build a house for my

mum. We’ve been working on a low-cost

housing model and this is the first case

study to see if it works. The two-level

house will be a similar floor area to Kirstin

and Dan’s, but this time we’re trying to

bring it in for $200,000.

A piece from the series

‘Still Life’ (2016) by Judy

Darragh.

The ceramics are

by Jenny Lange.

1. Entry


2. Laundry


3. Kitchen


4. Dining


5. Deck


6. Living


7. Bedroom


8. Bathroom

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