Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems: the Signal Box by Melling Morse Architects

Welcome to the third in our series of Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems, which we've created to help give insight into the process of designing and building a home - and staying within budget as you do so. 

This week, we visit the Signal Box in Masterton by Melling Morse Architects. The home won our 2008 Home of the Year award. Since then, we're sad to report that Gerald Melling, who ran Melling Morse Architects with Allan Morse, has passed away. We hope this post serves as a reminder of Gerald's cleverness and the original, thoughtful homes he and Allan created together. The photographs are by Paul McCredie.

The Signal Box by Melling Morse Architects, our Home of the Year in 2008, is whimsically inspired by the signal arms of the nearby railway station.

Make no mistake: Stephanie Chilcott loves her house. “It’s really lovely – in winter, I walk in when I get home from work, and it’s usually about five degrees warmer than it is outside, all thanks to the sun,” she says. “I wanted a house designed for me, and that’s what I’ve got. I found it really rewarding”. 

Once she had purchased her site near the Masterton railway station, Stephanie’s next challenge was to find an architect. With an estimated budget of just over $200,000, she found many architectural practices wouldn’t even allow her to make an appointment to see them, as they considered her budget unrealistic. Eventually she called architects Gerald Melling and Allan Morse, creators of a number of successful low-budget homes. She found them happy to take on the project.

In the kitchen, the 'PH5' lights are by Poul Henningsen. The artwork above the sink is by Bill Hammond.

In order to save money, Stephanie decided to manage the project herself, hiring the builder on a labour-only basis and ordering many of the materials and joinery. She estimates that doing this probably saved her $50,000. Despite this, her budget blew out, requiring her to eventually spend a total of about $350,000.

There are two options Stephanie believes she should have considered at the beginning of the process. One would have been to employ a quantity surveyor at the outset of the project to provide a more rigorous estimate of how much it would cost to build Melling Morse’s design. Stephanie says had she known how much the house would end up costing, she would probably still have gone ahead with the build, but saved herself the stress of needing to refinance part-way through the process. 

The home's entry hall is a cool respite in the heat of summer. The artworks are by Gavin Chilcott.

The other option she could have considered to keep costs from blowing out would have been to employ a builder on a fixed-price contract (a fixed-price contract means the builder agrees to complete the job for a mutually agreed sum). Some architects believe fixed-price contracts are inflexible and can create tension on a building site if unforeseen complications arise that require the builder to spend extra time on the job – something that is especially common in renovations, where the condition of the original building isn’t always clear. In Stephanie’s case, she did ask two builders to quote for fixed-price contracts, and both of them estimated a price of about $350,000. Those estimates turned out to be accurate, but at the time, Stephanie was convinced she could do it cheaper, so she employed a builder on a labour-only arrangement, which means the builder charged an hourly rate for his services. 

 

In the dining area, the concrete floor and insulated block walls retain solar heat.

Is the cost blowout an architects’ problem? Not necessarily. Architecture schools don’t teach students how to estimate costs, so most architects are judging a building’s budget from their own experience, or from an estimated average square-metre cost, which can prove to be inaccurate depending on the time required to realise an unusual design. It’s worth having a frank discussion about your financial situation with your architect, but to take the pressure off, a quantity surveyor or a project manager can work on your behalf to ensure your initial estimates are accurate, and that a building project comes in as close as possible to its original estimate. Architects will also manage the building process for you, for a higher percentage of the costs.

The living room features a vintage settee by Peter Hvidt. The artwork above it is by Gavin Chilcott.

The other thing Stephanie says first-timers should be aware of is that they need to budget for costs such as GST, council fees, architects’ fees, engineer’s fees, securing a building permit, drainage fees, and so on. Architects and tradespeople generally assume a budget figure to be net costs (this is so their fee, a percentage of the build costs, is based only on the net figure) – so if you tell an architect you have a budget of $200,000, he or she will create a design up to that amount without including potential ancillary costs unless specifically directed to do so.

The bedroom in the home's "Signal Arm" is a series of stepped platforms.

Q+A with Stephanie Chilcott

HOME What would you do differently if you were to build another house? 

Stephanie Chilcott The key thing is that I would probably pay money for a quantity surveyor or go for a fixed-price build. My advice would also be to be quite direct with your architect. [A budget blowout] is a gradual process that creeps up on you. Some building costs had escalated by the time we started. I could have finished the house more cheaply on the inside, but that would have cheapened it. You’ve got to finish a house the way it was intended, but that must be a serious dilemma for lots of people. 

HOME You managed the project yourself in order to save money. Was that challenging? 

Stephanie Chilcott You don’t need special skills to manage a process like this, but you do need to be able to interpret a plan to understand a little bit about the construction process. You need a really good relationship with the builder. I offered my builder a little bit more to manage the site – he had sub-contractors he liked to use so he used them. It’s important to have a clear discussion with your builder about who’s responsible for what. You don’t want to be involved in site management, deciding when the subbies should come. You shouldn’t spend any more time on the building site than you have to, but go down there only when required. If you go there too much, you start making changes and you’ll find yourself spending more money. You have the plans, you’ve got a builder – you let them get on with it. 

A small study is located on a landing on the way up to the bedroom.

 HOME Did you enjoy the process? 

Stephanie Chilcott I found it really rewarding to watch things come into three dimensions, to watch the house grow and change. The driver for the house was I wanted something designed for myself, and that’s what I’ve got – it’s been designed for me, for how I live. The proportions of all the rooms are perfect, and that’s what you’re paying for – design skills. The house has a valuation for more than it cost to build, and it has a value above the dollar stuff because of its inherent qualities.

"It was either going to be a complete embarrassing disaster or something a bit special," said architect Gerald Melling of the home's signal arm inspiration.

Before his death, Gerald Melling formed a Wellington-based architectural partnership, Melling Architects, with his son, David Melling. David still runs the practice today. Allan Morse has his own firm, Allan Morse Architect, also based in Wellington.

Design Case Studies with Altherm Window Systems: Drift Bay house by Kerr Ritchie Architects

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the first in our new series of Design Case Studies, which will run weekly here on our blog. 

The Design Case Studies are created to give you insight into the building process of some of the amazing homes in the magazine, so the owners can share some of the lessons they learned with you. The series is brought to you in association with Atherm Window Systems. 

The first Design Case Study visits Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr of Queenstown's Kerr Ritchie Architects and talks to them about how they allowed themselves maximum flexibility and minimum fuss with the construction of their home at Drift Bay on Lake Wakatipu. The photographs are by Paul McCredie.

Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr's home in Drift Bay, near Queenstown.

Architects often say that when they get to design their own homes they have a duty to experiment, and Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr’s home on the shores of Lake Wakatipu is no exception. When architects are their own clients, they also tend to leave their documentation until the last minute. For both of these reasons, Pete and Bronwen decided to hire a builder on a labour and materials arrangement, instead of a fixed-price contract (in which the builder agrees to complete the work on a house for a previously agreed price). “It seemed like a fair way to build and there was flexibility along the way,” Pete says. “Plans don’t have to be quite as tied down, so there’s more scope to move throughout the project. There was a certain amount of experimentation going on, and the builder enjoyed that – although it's not always what we would recommend to our clients, as many want more price certainty.”

Pete Ritchie and Bronwen Kerr of Kerr Ritchie Architects.

This arrangement allowed for small but important changes along the way, changes that would have involved potentially time-consuming renegotiation of a fixed-price building contract. For example, what was intended to be a large storage cupboard in an area at the centre of the house was changed into a room containing a pellet boiler to heat water for the underfloor heating system after Pete and Bronwen investigated heating options and decided a boiler was essential. In another case, they decided not to clad an external wall in cedar, but were able to arrange with the builder to use the leftover timber indoors instead. This flexibility minimised the potential stress of making big decisions a long way in advance. Instead, Pete and Bronwen had the luxury of refining details as the building evolved.

A view of the home with The Remarkables rising behind.

The couple started out with the intention of designing a “lean” house containing enough room for them and their three children, as well as a studio to allow them to run their architecture practise from home. Initially, they hoped to complete the house for somewhere around $2000 a square metre, a target they’d achieved on a home they had previously designed for themselves in Wellington.

The home's studio (where Pete and Bronwen work) and guest bedroom is in the volume at left, with the living areas and three additional bedrooms at right. The eastern courtyard, shown here, connects with the kitchen and catches the morning sun.

By the time building started on their Queenstown house in 2006, prices for building and materials had increased, meaning the cost of the new house came in closer to $2500 a square metre. Fortunately, the increase in the value of their lakeside land in the years between their purchase of it and the erection of their home gave them the ability to borrow more money to cover the extra cost.

The home's main living area looks north across Lake Wakatipu towards Queenstown.

Some decisions they made along the way helped keep costs down, but these choices were always made with the overall aesthetic of the building in mind. Inside, they made the economical choice of strandboard panels for doors, joinery and some walls, instead of the more expensive hoop pine they were initially considering. Now that the strandboard is installed, it feels perfectly in keeping with the home’s casual aesthetic.

The kitchen looks out to the courtyard. The staircase at left is
clad in Strandboard panels, which helped keep costs down
and fit the home's casual aesthetic.

The home's living area features cedar detailing that is also used on the exterior.

The other decision they made in order to save money was for Pete to become the builder’s labourer. The couple had just relocated from Wellington to Queenstown and didn’t have a great deal of local work on at that time, so the arrangement made financial sense and also gave Pete valuable insight into the building process (as well as making it clear that working outside in the middle of a Queenstown winter can sometimes be a bit grim).

 

One of the home's bathrooms features a sauna and a sliding door that opens to the garden. The walls feature 'Vixel' glass mosaic tiles.

Now, with their own home and a number of other commissions completed, the couple say they have a good handle on budgetary matters, but they also emphasise the role the client must play (along with a quantity surveyor or builder) in managing their expenditure. “We’ve found that a lot of clients want to manage projects themselves, and they call on us as required,” Pete says. “Some clients are very hands-on and have the time and capability to get involved in aspects of the building process, while others would rather keep more of a distance.”

A view through the house from the entry to the studio.

Q+A
Bronwen Kerr and Pete Ritchie

HOME Why did you decide on a labour and materials arrangement (in which a builder is effectively paid by the hour and for the materials used) with your builder instead of a fixed-price contract? 

Pete Ritchie: We had a good friend who was the builder, and because we know the industry we could source some materials ourselves. We were our own project managers, and to work like that you need a builder who you trust. A labour and materials arrangement is a pretty open and honest kind of system. We didn’t want to pay a huge premium for a fixed price, and nor did we want the builder to make a loss on the job. So it seemed like an appropriate way for us to work. Architects do have experience and expertise that not everyone else has. This gives them more confidence to work this way. 

HOME You worked as the builder’s labourer. Is that an experience you’d like to repeat? 

Pete Ritchie: On the whole I enjoyed it – I also painted the house myself and stained all the weatherboards. That saved quite a bit of money. But in the middle of winter weeks can go by without you seeming to make much progress, and it’s a bit grim and very cold and you have smoko around a campfire. 

HOME Was the process of building your own place helpful in knowing about budgets? 

Pete Ritchie: It gives you a good idea of where clients are coming from. We naturally tend to be conservative with budgets, and we don’t try to extend clients. The process gave us a really good foundation of understanding where costs lie and how to work within a budget. 

HOME When you learned the house would cost more than you originally intended, did you think about revising the plan, and reducing the home's size? 

Pete Ritchie: We didn't really feel we had any option but to carry on as we had originally planned. We had certain needs and requirements which included the studio we work from. It's not a particularly fat house, so there wasn't much to trim off. We weren't in the mindset of creating a house that was oversized anyway.

The home is clad in dark Colorsteel.

Outtakes: A beautiful beach getaway by Min Hall

It's that time of year when we start fantasising about taking a break - not an all-action holiday, but something quiet and wintry that mostly involves reading books around a fire. This home by architect Min Hall in Golden Bay seems to fit that description perfectly.

First, the plan, which is interesting in its own right. Min broke the house into modules designed to fit around the trees. There is one living and dining area, another wing for the main bedroom and the third for guests (below). The sea is on the eastern boundary, or right-hand side of the plan.

The photograph below (all these images were taken by Paul McCredie) shows the approach to the house, where cars pull up to the back of the house. Min designed the home's modules to be clad in different materials to break up the bulk of the building even further. Covered walkways connect the home's different parts.

Inside, the house has elegantly simple aesthetics - only two pieces of art feature in the property, so not to distract from its surroundings -  yet there are some unique design elements which define the house.

The box window in the dining area (below) is likened to a museum display and exaggerates the feeling of looking inwards through the forest. A Simon James-designed 'Hawk' table accompanies seating by Marc Zuckerman and a smaller rustic 'Uma' bench by Chad Heays.

Huge folding doors off the living area allow a large panorama of the bay (below).

Perhaps even better is the view from the main bedroom where, at high tide, water gently laps on the shore just a few metres away. This is the kind of thing real holidays are made of - when staying in bed seems like one of the best ways to enjoy the views.

Under threat: The Lomas house, Hamilton

Hamiltonians, contact your city councillors! TVNZ is reporting that a 1955 Hamilton home designed by Peter Middleton (that we featured in our October/November 2010 issue) is under threat of demolition.

Paul McCredie did a beautiful job of photographing the building for us (Linda Tyler wrote about the house). It's in a lush garden that the late Heather Lomas, the home's owner, spent decades creating. 

The home won an Enduring Architecture Award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects earlier this year. Middleton was commissioned to design the house by Heather Lomas and her husband Alan. Heather (below) lived in the house until her death in March. The house was later sold to a neighbour by members of Heather's family.

According to the TVNZ report, Waikato heritage consultant Ann McEwan "has called for the Lomas house on Lake Cres to be saved, and wants the Hamilton City Council to bend its district plan to save the 1950s building from demolition." You can read the TVNZ story here.   

It's a vexed issue, this. The new owner of the house is, legally, perfectly entitled to demolish it. The Lomas house, like many great modernist buildings, falls into an unprotected grey zone, where these structures are often not considered worthy of heritage protection until it's too late. 

Apart from the fact that we really like it, the Lomas house has genuine historical merit.  It is believed to be Hamilton's first architecturally designed house, and represented a brave early experiment in open-plan living. 

In its citation for the home's Enduring Architecture award, the NZ Institute of Architects said: 

The Lomas House is a fine building and also an inspiring architectural story. Designed for a young family in the 1950s, at a time when materials were rationed but optimism was far more plentiful, the house has gracefully kept pace with that family’s life for more than half a century. Frugal, but never mean with its spatial allocation, the house on its well-positioned site is cleverly and subtly arranged around the framework of a simple grid. Over the years, it has settled into a companionate relationship with the relaxed and unfussy garden. Inhabited beautifully, altered little, and maintained with care, the house is a case study in the lasting benefits of a sympathetic relationship between clients and Architect. 

Much of this inventiveness is evident in the home's careful planning, with level changes and sliding walls creating a greater sense of space in the living area.

In the TVNZ story, Ann McEwan suggests the Hamilton City Council should break its district plan rules to ensure the preservation of the house. The council says it hasn't received any demolition order for the building as yet. 

Outtakes: Concrete house by Simon Twose

One of our favourite images from our current issue is this one by Paul McCredie of a house in Kelburn, Wellington, by Simon Twose (the house was originally commissioned when Simon was working at Warren & Mahoney's Wellington office). This view looks from the home's bedroom wing across its courtyard, through the living areas and out to Wellington Harbour.

The home's owner, Brett Mainey, is also a builder - and a man who likes a challenge. So he asked Simon to design a house "that would be difficult to build". What resulted was a long, involved and ultimately rewarding collaboration between architect and client. As you can see in Paul's shot below, the house really stands out in its street of villas, its concrete facade demanding a response.

The home's entrance is set a little below the street, a sheltered spot out of the wind that opens onto the navigational fulcrum of the house - left to the bedroom wing, right to the living area.

In the left of this photo (below) you can see the home's central courtyard. Rather than leaving a small amount of space around the perimeter of the property, Simon designed the house so it pushed to the edges of its boundaries and concentrated this space in its courtyard instead.

More NZ architecture in Dwell

More New Zealand architecture on the cover of US magazine Dwell: in their last issue it was Gerald and Kate Parsonson's bach on the Kapiti Coast (you can see the cover in an earlier post here), while the latest issue features Wellington's Amanda Yates and the house she designed for her parents on the Coromandel Peninsula, which you may remember featuring on the cover of our very own December/January 2010 issue. You can view outtakes from Paul McCredie's shoot for us at the link here, and you can read the Dwell story (with photographs by Matthew Williams) online here. Nice to see some international recognition for this very interesting house. As always, remember where you read about it first...

Outtakes: Bergendy Cooke and Guy Fisher's Arrowtown house

We've been receiving plenty of good feedback about our current issue, much of it fan mail for the house near Arrowtown designed by Bergendy Cooke (of BCA Studio) for her partner Guy Fisher and their daughters Anouk and Kiki. This was more than enough encouragement to feature some outtakes here from Paul McCredie's shoot at the house.

This image shows the house on its site, rising abruptly (and intriguingly) from the lawn. The doors downstairs lead to the living areas (set back to provide summer shade), while upper-floor windows are tinted and set flush with the exterior. The slats you can see on the upper floor are part of a deck containing a sauna and open-air bath.

The home's northerly elevation has a subtle kink in it that provides for a slightly different aspect from each of the rooms in the living area and upstairs.

Inside, the living areas are semi-open-plan, with walls of black cabinetry dividing the living and dining areas.

This view below looks back towards the kitchen through the dining room. 

Let's go upstairs now - up the stairwell lined in beautiful boards of Southern Beech, to be exact (they're oiled with a product that has a whitening agent in it, so the boards now look as if they have soft pink tones).

Anouk and Kiki share a room. Bergendy and Guy designed some cool bunks for it.

The image below shows the steps (that double as shelving) from the guest room to the upper deck with the sauna.

And here's another view of the home's exterior, showing the entry at right (a door to the living room is at left).