Earth and Sky |
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Louise thomas suspects that a climbing wall would have been just the ticket in her family’s stunning Waiheke Island home. After all, it would solve the small dilemma of how to change the light bulbs high on concrete pillars stretching 10m from the living room floor.
The children would have loved it, she’s sure… just as they love being able to ride their bikes and scooters inside the house. They have the perfect track – 18 metres from one end of the house to the other, and it’s all concrete.
The biking journey would have included water-crossing if Louise and her husband Michael Holden had persisted with their original plan to include an internal stream dissecting their main living area. The stream was to have connected the waterfall inside with the swimming pool outside.
Though the stream didn’t eventuate, the infinity pool did and so too did the waterfall within, positioned where the atrium entranceway meets the main living area.
The home Louise and Michael share with their three children – Phoebe, 14, Alice, eight, and William, five – spans 850sqm and is made of rammed earth, poured earth and concrete.
It took six men three years to build. When Michael’s schedule as an Air New Zealand pilot allowed, he took up his tools and helped the builders with tasks such as constructing the rammed earth pillars.
“We built the house into the side of a hilltop. We dug a slice out and then used that earth mixed with fine metal and a small percentage of cement to form rammed earth. That then was forced into place with a jackhammer-like rammer. It was definitely labour- intensive and time-consuming,” says Michael.
The home’s planning stage wasn’t any speedier. Their initial resource consent had lapsed long before Louise and Michael presented their architect, Harry Kleyn, with some original ideas and scale drawings.
Louise recalls major thinktank sessions over the years as their ideas were refined.
“In the beginning, we put forward any ideas we had and everything we wanted in a house, to create a melting pot of ideas. This was important as hopefully it’s the last house we will ever build,” says Louise.
The house plans became more minimal and less “over the top” over time, she says. Ideas such as the little stream were shelved, as was the bridge to the double, copper front doors.
But some of Louise’s ideas were never going to be abandoned. Earth as a building material was a must, as were Japanese-style bathrooms and a sparsely decorated house dressed in natural colours.
“I have liked earth buildings forever. Because they are porous, they breathe and have such lovely energy,” says Louise. “Michael had never seen one. I dragged him to a weekend workshop on earth houses and he was sold.”
Both now enthuse about their home’s elemental aspect. With fireplaces, a waterfall and swimming pool and an earth building that breathes, they have the earth, fire, water and air bases covered.
As for the minimalist decor, once again Michael needed coaxing. It wasn’t how he initially envisaged his house would be and Louise confesses to resorting to some “pretty fast and convincing talk”.
Furniture is minimal, knick-knacks have no place and surfaces are usually home to nothing more than books or eco-friendly candles. The large expanses of earth walls are naked.
“It’s not that I don’t like art,” says Louise. “I love art. It’s because there it is, outside the windows, and you just can’t compete with that.”
The view from the Holden-Thomas home is hugely blue, uninterrupted and literally stunning.
“First-time visitors sometimes come in the back door, which is an understated entrance. When they see this view, their jaws drop and there is often silence,” says Michael.
His favourite chair is positioned to maximise the outlook, facing out over the 20m-long swimming pool to the Hauraki Gulf. It’s a particularly magical place to be, he says, at the equinox when the sun rises dead centre beyond the pool.
Louise finds magic in her Japanese-inspired bathrooms with their extra-deep bathtubs. She has a degree in Japanese and worked as a teacher in Japan and as an Air New Zealand flight attendant and interpreter. Her three years in Japan left her with a love of the Japanese bathing aesthetic – “the loveliness of a long shower and then a deep soak”.
The couple are also working towards self-sufficiency and sustainability. Their house sits on 4.6ha of mostly regenerating native bush although areas have been dedicated to producing vegetables, fruit and grapes – they have planted a vineyard that produces a high-end boutique syrah.
Being connected to, but not reliant on, the national grid is their goal and that will involve more solar panelling and a windmill, says Michael. Already the concrete floors on both levels are heated by a wetback boiler plus water pumped from solar tubes and the pool’s warmth comes from solar panels.
Their site includes other buildings that are in line with their earthy ethos, including a two-storeyed rammed earth building with accommodation upstairs. It works well when Michael’s older children, Nicola, Samuel and Tori, come to visit. The couple’s main builder, Steve Kruyff, also lived there for years. Downstairs is a man cave complete with drums, electric guitars and pool table.
Alongside is a mudbrick structure that was to have been a stable and instead became home while their new house took shape – it was supposed to be for a year but their stay ended up stretching beyond six years. But this family are in no doubt that some great things are definitely worth the wait.
Story: Monique Balvert-O’Connor
Photographs: Tessa Chrisp
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