Design
notebook
Q&A with Tim Gittos
of Spacecraft ArchitectsTalk us through the placement and
pattern of the skylights. They bring
northern and eastern light into the main
room, which otherwise has only western
and southern aspects, and changing,
dappled light and sun throughout the
day. The skylights run down the walls that
separate the main room from the smaller
parts of the house and add to the feeling
of this space being a sheltered outdoor
area of a very different quality to the rest
of the house.You were working to a budget for a
young couple – how did you keep that
in check and what materials did you
use? Cladding is economical Zincalume
and there are exposed concrete floors
throughout. Generally, the massing of the
house was very important in cost control.Creating simplicity allowed you to
spend in other spaces. Please expand
on this. The idea was to keep the envelope
of the house simple – square in plan,
pitched roof. The bedrooms have a pre-nail
truss roof and flat ceilings, which make
them cosy and economical. By saving
money in those areas we could spend
on large double-glazed units and some
structural steel in the main room to make
this a special moment central to the house.Most of your work is in Wellington, often
on tricky sites. Were you able to apply
learnings from these projects to this
job? Yes, the work on tricky sites has
given us a lot of experience in designing
smaller houses (often necessitated by the
site constraints). A lot of the economical
planning employed here is a result of
these other designs.Conversely, was there anything new
that this project taught you? We made
the bedrooms quite traditional – with
a flat, 2.4-metre ceiling, medium-size
windows – and these work in counterpoint
to the unconventional main room, with its
high plywood ceiling, skylights, expanses
of glazing. Moving between the two scales
is really lovely.- Entry
- Laundry
- Ensuite
- Wardrobe
- Bedroom
- Deck
- Bathroom
- Study
- Living
- Kitchen
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