Light touch |
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Twists and turrets and hidden cupboards, window seats, doll-sized balconies and a bright red door. These are the whimsical details of a delightful Freemans Bay, Auckland, home owned by radio producer Mark Wilson. It’s “a Wendy house for grown-ups,” he says.
Even more intriguing is the home’s place in New Zealand’s aesthetic history: it is one of four 1970s townhouses created by Claude Megson, one of this country’s most influential and original architects.
Known as the Cocker Townhouses, they were commissioned in the late 1960s by artist Bill Cocker, a friend of Megson. Cocker wanted structures that would both complement and challenge the Victorian/Edwardian stateliness of the villa-filled neighbourhood and asked Megson to design four separate but linked dwellings on a single section. He was clearly happy with the townhouses Megson designed, which were completed in 1973; Bill Cocker and his sister Finola still live in two of the homes today, surrounded by 20th century New Zealand art they’ve collected from artist friends.
The phrase “1970s townhouse” would send shudders through anyone with memories of the dark wood and hectic patterns of the era, but these homes are quite different – sun-drenched, full of blond wood and large windows.
In 2008, Mark heard that one of the houses was for sale and swung by to check it out on his way to work at nearby RadioLive, where he produces the Maggie Barry Drive show.
“I loved it immediately,” says Mark. “I was moving from a very comfortable 1940s ex-state house in Mt Albert, which was no beauty from the outside but the most practical home you could ever imagine, into this 1970s Wendy house with a switchback staircase and pitched roof and lovely little nooks and crannies everywhere. I love my little home. It’s got a wonderful sense of lightness.”
The move across town also marked a new sense of spiritual lightness for Mark, 42, whose wife Zita died in 2006.
“When I saw this place, I thought it was the ideal bachelor pad with an edge. I got rid of all my furniture to make way for new stuff that would fit into the new place. It was partly about moving on from the past and partly about realising that this place was only really going to shine if I had furniture that matched it. Funnily enough, it hasn’t been the big emotional shift I feared it would be.”
There’s another reason for that. Mark has found love again and now shares his new home with girlfriend Annabelle. Together they have created a balance of whimsy and warmth to match the house – both love art and miniatures and they’ve filled their shelves and nooks with carefully chosen treasures from their travels.
“We’ve gone trinket-tastic,” says Mark, “but we’ve tried to be restrained in what we actually put out on the shelves. We’ve just come home from a trip to Japan and we loved looking at all the lovely small houses. We both feel that in New Zealand we generally live in a world where the emphasis is on size and space and scale, but here in our house we have a series of small rooms that honour the idea that you can live a really good life in a smaller place. In a more compact space, you really have to pick the right piece of furniture or lighting to make it sing, whereas with a bigger house it’s easier to hide the mistakes.”
To that end, Mark and Annabelle called in expert help – designer Kathleen Haimes from Uno Design in Grey Lynn. Together they have sought to get the most out of the 110sqm house, making furnishings and decor predominantly white to offset the timber floors and fittings.
Iain Cheesman, an artist who hangs pictures for galleries, helped Mark and Annabelle decide which works to hang and display and where to put them. It felt frightfully posh to be hiring an art consultant, says Mark – especially when he whipped out a laser to help get the paintings precisely horizontal – but they agree the expense was worthwhile.
“He found a home for everything. It was absolutely brilliant. He plucked exactly the right items out of the things we’ve both collected over the years,” says Mark.
One favourite place is a window seat overlooking the courtyard garden and beyond towards the city. The spot is drenched in morning sun and hosts a collection of cushions Mark and Annabelle had collected separately over the years. “We sit there on a Sunday morning and read the paper and have our breakfast and enjoy the sun,” says Mark.
The kitchen still includes its original blond-wood cupboards and fittings – with characteristically scant 1970s pantry space and a smooth stainless-steel workbench.
Adding to the space-maximising feel are floating shelves on the downstairs walls and a blond-wood Habitat expandable dining table. For dinner parties, Mark and Annabelle drag the table out onto the lawn and revel in the luxury of having their own private garden so close to the city.
There’s no particular theme to the decor, just a connecting thread of good design. “That’s what I’ve come to realise about these places,” says Mark. “What Megson built here is timeless, in that it doesn’t scream 70s. It’s like any piece of good design – you can put pretty much anything with them and they’ll look good. They’re great little show ponies and they have a lovely sense of honouring the old Auckland villas that are here in the nearby streets.
“I love the sense of sustainability too: getting the most out of a small site by building four really individual freehold-title places that honour the old Auckland but are also quite inventive. At the time they were built, the project really did challenge everyone, but they’ve blended into the neighbourhood now and become a great little secret gem.”
And as for that red door – when Mark moved in, he noticed all four townhouses had different-coloured front doors: powder-blue, yellow, green “and mine was aubergine. I repainted it bull’s-eye red. The exterior is all white and I loved the brightness and sharpness of red to set it off. And all the doors are different, which is really nice; some have glass and some don’t. It adds to the individuality and quirkiness.”
Quirky probably wasn’t among the words Mark muttered when he discovered he’d botched the paint job by putting masking tape on only one side of the glass door surround, thus smearing red paint all over the interior glass. “My dad ended up spending a whole day getting rid of the paint,” says Mark with a laugh. “I just couldn’t have been bothered… thank God Dad came along, otherwise I’m sure it would have stayed that way for years.”
Story: Claire Harvey
Photographs: Guy Frederick
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