“We love our 'new house' and are really happy with the design and delivery through the team at Wright & Gray.”
- Clients
This project was a simple extruded extension and partial renovation of an existing old 1928 bungalow.
Although the title, our client quote and the design appear to be very simple, the process to achieve that simplicity is never always a straight road.
In this project Wright & Gray Architects undertook nine concept options, and it shows our dedication to working very hard to get things right from the very beginning, and to never give up! Our clients needed help with their brief, and sometimes patience, listening, and more drawing are required to find what is really needed. Even though this took a little more time, and fee, to get the design right at the start, it delivers the key strategies of the project that flow through to all others that allocate expensive resources. We think this is smart, and the results are always evident at the end of a project, including this one. Budget and completion time were intact (this was also constructed during covid times).
Thinking big picture, a good design process from a Registered Architect pays dividends for how you want to live and for the resale of your property. This is true. Our clients on this project valued this process and understood that it was an investment of money well spent.
The brief was to extend the existing house to include a new laundry, open plan dining/ kitchen/ family living space and guest bedroom (come multi-use space). This brief was also for a young family. The house needed to deliver for the children and parents at different times in their life from under-fives though to teenagers and beyond. The evolving brief and options also included connecting this extension to the outside with a large canopy, leading to a newly retained and flattened rear yard to make better use of play space and shelter. At the time the back lawn sloped in both directions and could be made better for this purpose. With very poor tight access on a hilly site, Wright & Gray Architects worked closely with the client and a selected main contractor, to find the right people to excavate the rear yard cost effectively. With specialised machinery this was achieved without need for expensive helicopters or calling it ‘impossible’.
Sun was a major factor in the design and the careful arrangement of skylights was a must to let light into the design.
Spencer Holmes (structural engineer) were well placed to provide good advice to help find solutions to solve our space planning problems, where one of the walls to the house required waterproofed retaining. There was a mixture of commercial engineering solutions in this project, which were dressed and disguised architecturally in order to provide the right solution to enable the brief and aesthetics to be fulfilled.
The results and client endorsements speak for themselves. As registered Architects, Wright & Gray Architects have wide experience in designing renovations for old bungalows, villas, or other, on hilly sites, to a modern standard. Our commercial background also means that we can find solutions that might not fit a traditional standard but are an efficient way to make a design work well. Coordinating with the right people with the right skill set, difficult problems can be solved. We can still provide an effortless simple looking aesthetic with great proportions. Wright & Gray Architects can provide solutions to architectural problems, that suit a wide range of needs and desires.
Contact us now if you value these strengths in choosing your Registered Architect. We would love for you to become one of our new clients and to experience our design process whether your project is tricky or not.
Collaborators:
Structural engineer: Spencer Holmes Ltd – Engineering, Surveying, Planning.
Building contractor: David Hale Building Ltd
