Finder's Keepers - Art Deco Home

When Niel and Jette de Jong bought their art deco home in the Auckland suburb of Three Kings in 1991, they had no idea quite how much it would influence the direction of their lives – it even led to a change of career. After buying, they launched straight into a six-month project to remove all inauthentic fittings from the 1930s home, which had been built for a civil servant to a Government Drawing Office plan. In fact, some state houses of the period were built to the same plan.

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Jette, who has a background in fashion and interior design, was keen on art deco  and, as she and Niel delved into their research, that liking turned to love. And so, in 1996, along with half a dozen others who were also restoring art deco houses around town, they founded the Art Deco Society Auckland Inc.
“We wanted to learn from each other and to help preserve some of the art deco treasures we saw getting lost,” says Niel.

Also in 1996, Niel and Jette began the first wave of major work on their own house: the front porch roof was leaking. Niel began designing a curved replacement but a casual comment from his mother about making the project “something worthwhile” led to a design that more than doubled the size of the house.
The former basement, where Niel and his band used to practise, was dug out to form a miniature 1920s-style picture theatre and a curved-front double-storey extension followed.

Niel and Jette soon found that they were often asked for advice by renovators – on interior design, colour schemes, furniture and, of course, extensions. Niel was working as a sound designer in film and television at that stage but the couple felt ready for a change in direction. Despite a lack of formal training they decided to establish a consultancy. So, at the age of thirty and with their first son, Henry Te Reiwhati, on his way, Niel began studying architecture.

Today the lower floor of the 1996 extension to their home is the office of Heritage Design Group, from which Jette (as project manager) and Niel run their own practice along with two like-minded architect colleagues. At about the same time, he and Jette, then eight months pregnant, hosted the grand gala opening of their “new” art deco picture theatre. “Friends thought we were mad to finish the theatre before the baby’s room,” says Jette, “but we knew it would never happen if we didn’t do it then. And I also knew the baby wouldn’t care or even notice if his room was finished.”

They had played with various possible uses for the large basement room but, when a friend mentioned there were seats from Tauranga’s old Odeon Theatre up for sale, the idea of a home theatre leapt to the top of the list. “The seats were all in storage next to a boat builder’s yard and covered in fibre-glass dust,” says Jette. “We spent most of a day crawling over them, checking them out, making sure we chose the best seats and getting very itchy in the process.”

The theatre seats twenty and has possibly the country’s smallest projection booth, equipped with both “real” movie projectors and a DVD player. Elegant curtain swags conceal the nine speakers for the Dolby Digital DTS 6.1 surround-sound system (no compromises for the former sound designer).

The boys – Henry is now eight and Lewis Raharuhi is six – and their friends enthusiastically stage many a play in the  family-friendly theatre. The stage is small, so the builder was surprised the design included two back-stage doors. But, as Niel explains, “You’ve got to have stage left and stage right.” There’s even a “green room” – a storage room to one side of the stage with striking green-painted walls.

Proud as Niel is of the theatre, his favourite innovations are in the garage and on the roof. In early 2006 the couple decided to invest in their beliefs and make the house more environmentally sound. “How can we expect our clients to invest in the technology if we won’t do it ourselves?” he says. So, as well as an old Jaguar waiting to be converted to biofuel and a pushbike on which Niel tows the two boys to school, the garage now houses three rainwater-collection tanks with a total capacity of 10,000 litres. This is no simple DIY system. After a dry spell, the “first flush” of 180 litres is purged so that bird droppings, leaves and dirt from the busy road nearby are washed away. Before the collected water is used, it passes through a sophisticated filtration system that includes a black light UV filter.

If there’s no rain for a couple of weeks and the tanks run dry, they automatically maintain a minimum level from the council supply. “Just because it’s good for the environment doesn’t mean it has to be difficult to live with.” A quick scramble up the ladder on the side of the house reveals a solar water heater and a bank of photovoltaic panels, all hidden by the art deco parapet. The photovoltaics generate enough electricity to power the office’s four computers; any surplus is fed back into the national grid.

The de Jongs’ practice has a strong sustainability ethic and much of their work involves renovating classic villas, bungalows, art deco and modernist architecture. “The building industry is extremely wasteful,” says Niel. “Unless a house is so badly built that it’s not worth saving, we consider renovation to be the ultimate in green building.”