Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems: Architect Dave Strachan's eco-friendly Auckland renovation

The fifth in our series of Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems visits the Auckland family home of architect Dave Strachan (of Strachan Group Architects), a former bungalow that's had a significant renovation with increased energy efficiency one of the primary goals.  The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.

You could say that architect Dave Strachan has a 360-degree view of the process of designing and building a home. He was a builder before he went to architecture school and, along with his wife Colleen, he was his own client when he designed an extensive renovation of the couple’s bungalow in the Auckland suburb of Mount Eden (he also had to supervise his sons, who worked as builders on the project). This led to a mild case of multiple personality disorder. “When you’re the client, the architect and the builder, you wonder who’s calling the shots,” Dave says. “The client wants to know how much it is, the builder wants to know if you can do it easier, and the architect is reaching for the sky.”

Dave Strachan's family home in Auckland is a bungalow that's had a significant, environmentally senstive renovation.

Of course, performing these roles simultaneously saved the couple a lot of money. Their original bungalow was 180 square metres, but now the extension is complete, Dave and Colleen (who at the time had all four of their children living at home) have a renovated home measuring about 300 square metres in size.
  

The home before renovations began.

A view of the home after renovations were complete.

They initially explored the option of demolishing the bungalow and starting anew. Dave estimates that if a client was to pay a builder and an architect for an all-new home of that size (which includes a swimming pool), they would be looking at a bill of about $900,000 (plus the pool). In this case, Dave and Colleen completed the job for about $500,000. “I reckon we’re about $400,000 better off because we decided to keep the old bungalow,” he says. “And I think there’s something really nice about the embodied memory that’s still in our building – the heart of it still beats.” Part of the savings came from doing so much of it himself, but Dave still estimates that if a client was to undertake a similar project, they would save about $250,000 by keeping an old house.

The home's two-stage entryway features a garden
inside the building envelope that leads to the front door.

Two of Dave Strachan's conceptual sketches for the renovation.

A new indoor-outdoor living area at the rear of the house faces northwest and is usable year-round.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Dave does a budget estimate for a client himself at the sketch design stage, but calls in an independent quantity surveyor to estimate the cost of a build once the design has been developed. The biggest challenge, Dave says, is marrying clients’ wish lists to their budgets – and if they don’t match, letting the clients know quite clearly at the outset of the process that what they’re asking for is not achievable. The clients then have the option of scaling down their desires, or finding the extra finance to meet the budget.

The cliché that anyone taking on a new building project should estimate their budget then double it is, Dave says, “a horrible thought”. He prides himself on making clients aware of the full scope of potential costs at the outset of a project, including council and resource consent fees, building in a contingency for landscaping, and so on. If a client asks for something outside that scope, Dave says they need to be informed that such a decision will have budgetary implications. It’s a process that has worked successfully for Strachan Group Architects – a house they recently designed in the Auckland suburb of Parnell, for example, has a developed design budget (by a registered quantity surveyor) that is consistent with the original project estimate. “We’ve lost jobs where people have come in with a budget and we’ve told them it’s unrealistic, and they’ll go to someone else who tells them what they want to hear,” he says, “but you have to be honest with people about the process.”

The home's main bedroom looks onto the back lawn. The lightshade is by David Trubridge.

Q+A with Dave Strachan

HOME What was the hardest part about the process of renovating your own home? 

Dave Strachan We decided, rightly or wrongly, to live in it while we did it, so we put up with all the dust, mess, noise, and camping and decamping as you move around the building as various phases get completed. I remember lying in bed during a terrible storm after we’d pulled off as much roof of the old bungalow as we could cover with a tarpaulin and listening to the tarpaulin flapping around in the wind and finding water coming down the Gib board inside. With the design, I relied on the team at the office – you can get too close to a project like this, so it’s good to have people to talk to. 

Architect Dave Strachan.

HOME Does your background as a builder help you gauge a budget more accurately? 

Dave Strachan In general, you know how much everything costs. But we don’t do budgets with guesswork – in the initial stages, we calculate them by using the price books in our office. And we have a good feel for it and a collaborative approach with the builders we use. 

A view of the home's new living area with pool outside.

HOME What do you think of the old cliché that if you have a budget for a project, you should double it to get a realistic figure?
Dave Strachan I reckon there’s no excuse for that. The budget needs to marry reasonably well with the clients’ wish-list at the outset. After that it’s about knowing the budgetary consequences of the decisions the clients make, and informing them of that. We get a quantity surveyor in at the developed design stage and we don’t proceed with a project unless the client sees those cost estimates and says that they’re OK. Sometimes clients’ budgets don’t really match their dreams, and they don’t often admit that. A lot of it is about having a reasonable budget to cope with the scope that you intend.

Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems: Newmarket Townhouses by Scarlet Architects

It was a tale of two townhouses when architects Jane Aimer and Lindley Naismith decided to design their own homes in the Auckland suburb of Newmarket. 

In this, the second of our series of Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems, Aimer and Naismith talk about how the design of their homes was also a masterclass in project and budget management. The photographs are by Patrick Reynolds.

Jane Aimer, her husband Paul Kelly, and their children Gina
and Tom are in the left-hand townhouse, while Lindley
Naismith and her partner John Balasoglou
occupy the right-hand home.

Naismith and Aimer live next door to each other in in twin houses they designed themselves (with the assistance of their partner at Scarlet Architects, Mike Dowsett). Being so deeply involved in their own building process gave them even greater insight into their clients’ experiences, and the challenges of managing budgets. “Nothing hones the mind more than doing it for yourself,” Naismith says. “It gives you an insight into the stress of the project and what happens to people psychologically as they go through it. It’s a heady mix of financial pressure, emotional pressure, time pressure and relationship pressure.” 

The homes have shutters that filter late-afternoon westerly light and are a nod to the heritage homes in the neighbourhood.

From left: Mike Dowsett, Lindley Naismith and
Jane Aimer of Scarlet Architects.

Much of that pressure stems from the common misperception that equates a builder’s tender with the overall budget for a house, when in the final reckoning, the overall cost of a home can be far, far higher than that. That’s because a builder’s tender doesn’t include the costs of all the extras needed to complete a home: lighting, interior cabinetry, landscaping, drapes, bathroom and kitchen fittings and fixtures … the list is long and the size of the final bill can vary enormously. 

The rear view of the homes (which are on separate titles)
shows Aimer's home on the right, and Naismith's on the left.
The gardens are connected by two sliding doors - if either
couple has theirs shut, it's a signal they don't want to
be interrupted (although this is rarely the case). 

The view to the garden from the living room in Aimer's house. The artwork is by Tracey Tawhiao.

In Aimer and Naismith's own project, they attempted to assess the cost of all these extras early on in the design process, just after the builder’s quote had arrived. They estimated a budget for each of the items over and above the builder’s estimate, and as the building process continued they endeavoured to make each of these items adhere as closely as possible to their original estimates to keep the budget on track. “It’s the little increments that can get you,” Lindley says. 

Rooms in each home are arranged vertically around light-filled stairwells - green in Aimer's home, and red in Naismith's.

The staircase in Naismith's home features red plexiglass.

This kind of budget creep – a few extra thousand here, and a few more there – may be the source of the old (and unfair) adage that if you’re using an architect, you should set a budget and then expect to double it. In the relatively recent past, it was indeed considered an architect’s job to estimate a client’s budget. These days, the process of building has become much more complicated, and the possible range of variations much greater. That’s why Aimer, Naismith and Dowsett prefer to get a quantity surveyor involved in the early stages of every project. “We always do a reality check early on,” Aimer says. “We haven’t got a project until the client is happy with the cost of it.” 

A view of the kitchen and dining area in Naismith's home.

Looking into the living room of Aimer's home from the stairwell.

Even then, it remains the clients’ responsibility to control the budget and keep track of expenditure (unless they have employed a project manager or paid the architects to manage the building process). After all, architects have no control over whether their clients choose top-of-the-range kitchen appliances, or lavish bathroom tiles, or other budget-blowing interior finishes that may not have been originally specified. Says Naismith: “There’s a huge responsibility there for clients, and some of them ignore it. Often if things are over budget, it’s not the responsibility of the architect, because of the fittings the client has chosen. You can have fancy tiles and wonderful lighting, but the budget might not be estimated for that level of finish.” 

This sectional drawing shows the way both homes are organised around their central stairwells.

Ironically, when it came to their own project Jane and Lindley ignored their own good advice of getting a quantity surveyor’s estimate, and instead relied on their own best estimates of the non-build costs. These estimates weren’t as accurate as a quantity surveyor would have been. Jane and Lindley’s houses were budgeted to cost about $750,000 each. Because Jane and her partner Paul had a little more flexibility with their budget, they specified high-quality lighting and other fittings, and ended up spending about $250,000 more. Lindley, however, wanted to stick more closely to her budget, which often resulted in her and her partner John choosing cheaper options, and spending about $120,000 more than they anticipated, all the while resisting the pressure all renovators or new-home builders come under to finish a job “properly”. 

Another view of the exterior of the homes. The cottage on the
right was an earlier project renovated by Naismith.

A little extra here and there may not seem like a big deal in comparison to the overall amount of money being spent, but each of these items adds up. But now their homes are complete and happily occupied, neither Jane nor Lindley thinks they have over-capitalised, and both say they are now better informed about managing budgets than ever. 

Naismith's living room features a Skagen couch from
Bromhead Design and a Lammhults-designed chair from
Katalog. The bench is by George Nelson for Herman
Miller from Matisse, and the 'Tolomeo' floor lamps and
Arteluce table lamp are from ECC.

The mezzanine study in Naismith's home overlooks the dining area.

Q+A

Mike Dowsett, Lindley Naismith and Jane Aimer of Scarlet Architects

HOME How did you estimate your budget? 

Mike Dowsett After the builder’s estimated price came in, we set a budget based on previous jobs and guestimated figures for additional items. 

Jane Aimer We took a stab at trying to identify things that weren’t part of the builder’s price. The builder’s cost is nowhere near the full cost, so setting that budget early on was really good for us, as we’d compare it to every sub-contractors’ quote that came in, and if their quote was higher, then we’d discuss what we needed to do to get it down.

Lindley Naismith The best way to avoid budget blowouts is to rigorously estimate the budget at an early stage.

HOME When things looked too expensive, how easy was it to bring costs down? 

Lindley Naismith One example is how we put a lot of effort into the stairwells that form the core of our homes. We found the original quote was for them to be built in a highly finished architectural way. In the end we chose a more commercial-style installation and decided to live with the imperfections. It’s less refined, with bolts visible, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Mike Dowsett Originally we had specified commercial-grade windows, but they turned out too expensive so we used standard residential windows that we bulked up a bit so they read as heavier sections.

HOME Why do you use a quantity surveyor on jobs you are designing for clients?  

Lindley Naismith We really push for it even if our clients want to rush ahead. Because we are optimistic folk we want to please our clients, so the temptation to underestimate is huge. So getting a quantity surveyor in involves a third party and takes the project away from us being optimistic.

Jane Aimer If you want a job to meet a budget you have to look at all the line items and make sure they meet budgets. Clients have to be rigorous about that, with our help.

The homes' shared rooftop features a hot tub underneath an array of solar panels.