Two men from wildly different worlds join forces to explore the NZ home on a road trip in a 1960s Mark 2 Jag. 5.35 here on The Source. 'I'm Goran Paladin. Up until very recently, you would've said I'm just a sports radio guy. 'But fronting a TV show about house renovation...' BANG! ...got me thinking about my own home. This is my house here in Birkdale on the North Shore of Auckland. It's a bit of a do-up, but, you know, it all takes time and money. My dream is to live in a truly great NZ home. But how do I discover whether it's even possible to create a dream home out of my Birkdale do-up? This is renowned architect Ken Crosson, a man at the top of his game ` the perfect person to accompany me on my journey of discovery. Ken's going to show me his world ` Has somebody taken the rest of the house away? a world where I know nothing... He must've been smoking somethin' crazy. ...and he knows,... Concrete, timber, galvanised steel. ...well, nearly everything. Don't get it. Very avant-garde. Orthogonal, rectilinear. Pardon? Oblong. Beton brut. I'm tired of you speaking in riddles, dammit. If Goran's going to realise his dream home,... See the structure? ...first he needs to understand what a NZ home is. I have a feeling you're gonna show me something. Another vanilla villa here in Grey Lynn. From basic box... Oh, this is spacious (!) ...to modern mansion and just about everything in between. Why are you taking me to a toilet block? Do our homes reflect who we are... Goodness me! ...and where we've come from? There is absolutely no way that you could call that a NZ home. He seems a pleasant bloke. I'm all ears. Expose him to culture, creativity and style. It's just another case of us stealing something from overseas, isn't it? Who knows? He might actually learn something. Were you not listening? No. I have a tendency of doing that. Maybe we will find a NZ home. Is that a challenge? A big ask for this sports jock. Are surprised by that? And I'm up for the challenge. Cheers, Ken. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 WILD-WEST MUSIC Ken's invited me to meet him on the top of Mt Eden ` a strange place to begin a road trip to learn about the NZ home. It's the big picture. From here, there are houses as far as the eye can see. It's actually the perfect place to kick off our journey. Ken. Goran. Sorry, mate. I should've dressed up for the occasion. I'm in jandals on the top of a mountain in the cold. It's not really ideal, is it? Yeah. You're not getting cold feet about doing a show together, are you? Nah. Nah, nah, nah. I think you're gonna be able to guide me along the way. Just keep the words small and concise,... (LAUGHS) ...and I think we'll go a long way together. Like all big journeys, you've just gotta take the first step. Well, the story of the NZ home has to start with Maori architecture. Let's go and find out about that. ENGINE TURNS OVER Uh, at least it started first time. That's something. Where's the air conditioning? (CHUCKLES) This is gonna be a lot of fun. BOTH LAUGH UPBEAT MUSIC Maori architecture. That really is starting at the beginning. I'm not sure how that's going to help with my Birkdale do-up. I don't see a lot of Maori influence on our homes today. That's a pretty simplistic view of it. Hm? There are definitely influences with Maori architecture. I think one of the interesting things was that Maori had an architecture that was about a roof, and so it was about shedding water. GEARS SHUDDER Is this your car, or have we stolen it? Do you know how to drive it? (CHUCKLES) I think both Maori and the European colonists could see that it was a rainy environment, and so the roof element became quite important. It's not like Mediterranean architecture, which have flat roofs. So we've got the same roof. Big whoop (!) The roof element being the same in both cultures is really relevant and really important. NZ's human history is the shortest in the world. The first people arrived here during the 1200s, and initially, they built their homes and villages near the sea that brought them here. Their culture was communal, with intricate family and tribal relationships. Settlements and homes reflected that. Villages were based around the extended family or hapu. The village, or kainga, was a group of buildings, each with a separate purpose ` sleeping, food storage, meeting. Not the way I think of a home. All that's usually under one roof. Well, exactly. The first place you take me isn't even a home. Goran, we're gonna start with a history lesson. (GROANS) I hate history! How are ya? Good to see you again. Gidday, Rau. How are you? Nice to see you. Yeah, you too. Rau, this is Goran. Hey. Pleasure to meet ya. To really get the NZ home, I think we start right at the beginning. With Ngati Hau and Ngapuhi bloodlines, fellow architect Rau Hoskins is the perfect launching pad. When Maori did arrive, did they bring an architecture with them? They did bring an architecture, but they had to modify that because of the climate here in Aotearoa, where you really needed warmth in winter, using raupo. It's perfect walling material, whether it was bundled or in panels, and it made for very warm houses further south in particular. So Maori were into home insulation right from the start? I've only just got that sorted in my own home. So that's a very early manipulation of a traditional architecture to accommodate what they found here. Maori quickly realised they needed insulation packed into both the roof and the walls. The thatching techniques they brought from the Pacific continued cos you needed a waterproof dwelling here in Aotearoa as well. The use of a tahuhu ` in other words, a ridge beam ` was important right throughout Polynesian architecture. The tahuhu ` being able to erect a ridge pole, and then being able to build the rest of your whare from that. MAN: # Haramai ana te tangata ki te...! It was simple, built in three to seven days. But these whare were not statements about your social status, unless you were the chief. Many of them adopted Western-style buildings to signal their status, because it represented a superior dwelling. There's a recorded instance where, uh, Maihi in the north, a chief of the time, was receiving Tawhiao, the Maori King. Maihi had a two-storey villa, as he was chief of the area, so that's what he had. One afternoon, Tawhiao was there, and he asked where Maihi was. And it was said that, 'Oh, he's upstairs sleeping.' And to have another person physically above you, particularly` he was the Maori King, was the height of bad manners. You don't put people above you because that person is interfering with your mana. So what happened? Did they just wake him up and bring him downstairs? No, he left. Oh, OK! (LAUGHS) Tawhiao left and said, 'Hey, I'm outta here.' ALL LAUGH So there you see adopted European architecture having cultural problems. It wasn't until the 1950s that NZ again saw a strong Maori influence in home design. John Scott, credited as being the first Maori architect, actually never completed his degree, but he still stands as one of the great visionaries of his time. In an era obsessed with the divisions between Maori and Pakeha, his designs were about fusion rather than separation. Is he seen as a Maori architect, or is he seen as an architect who is Maori, in your eyes? I certainly see the way that his houses were designed. They definitely did respond to Maori drivers and attempted to make an architecture of this place. I really respect what John did as someone who brought his culture to the design, and his attention to detail and exploration of different materials. It was amazing. For instance, the Martin House in Hawke's Bay with a whole separate wing for the teenagers, and that was unheard of in 1970. That's all fascinating. Rau really knows his stuff. With such a strong recommendation, John Scott's Martin House is our next port of call. Goran needs to understand where we've come from before he can look at where he's going. Is it three units, or has somebody taken the rest of the house away? What about having a house that's composed of just lots of little bits like a village? I certainly think it's an important house to visit, and the original owner still lives here. Bruce was John Scott's client in 1969. Bruce, this is Goran. Nice to see you. Bruce, lovely to meet you. How are you? Pleased to meet you, yeah. Where I'm from, a house has one roof. GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC This has multiple different areas. Talk me through it. I mean, what's the deal? I've been asked a number of times, you know, 'Why did we choose John Scott?' John educated us on the way through, so we understood the idea of the open-plan. To us, it wasn't a surprise. To nearly everybody else, it was. (LAUGHS) Well, it was pretty out there at the time, wasn't it? It was. This idea of open-plan, exposing the structure, exposing the materials. Yes. We discussed materials. We didn't want carpet on the floor, so he suggested using these tiles. We didn't want wallpaper. We were left with the raw concrete block. It's certainly different. He was trying some new things and this idea of truth is beauty, seeing the materiality, seeing what was being used. Which we enjoy because of the natural colour of it. What did other friends and family think once it was constructed? Well, most of them were very polite. ALL LAUGH And then what were they saying behind your back? I don't know. ALL LAUGH And who cares? GENTLE PIANO MUSIC Most people, once they'd been inside and saw the contrast between the high and the low ceilings and the open-plan, they really liked it. You've got the landscape coming right inside, in a way, haven't you? Very much so, yeah. It's lovely. And you've got these series of little windows all the way around that you actually connect to the outside, with different connections to the sun. BIRDS TWEET Did your kids live in the far pod if I can call it that? You know, they were young teenagers, and they wanted their friends in and play their music... Rowdy, full of noise. ...and all the rest. Yeah. It was lovely to have that separation. He was just a great architect. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. He was an extraordinary man, and he could manipulate space and materials, and he does these beautiful crafted buildings. Yeah. Back in the 19th century, the Maori home was about to be overrun, but was the European-style home actually better? You can see it's really small. It's quite dark. Mm. I don't know how you'd live in something like this. LAID-BACK GUITAR MUSIC Why don't you go that way? Because that takes us to the Waitakeres. Oh. CHEERFUL MUSIC Early Europeans did live with Maori, but they always had this notion that they needed to get into an architecture that reminded them of home, and so they started building little timber cottages and little timber huts. So what you're telling me is the Europeans, they came, they saw how the Maori were living, and they thought, 'Nah, stuff that.' Their priority was about a social system. FUNKY MUSIC GULL SQUAWKS Early in the 19th century, NZ was a three-month sea journey away from Europe. It must've seemed like the most remote place on Earth. Why did people even come here? The main attraction was killing seals and whales for their oil. Most Europeans were temporary visitors at the time, although a few stayed on in what must've seemed a very wild country. I wonder what Maori made of these visitors. I'm sure they had no idea of the impact Europeans were going to have on their lives. CICADAS CHIRP, BIRD SINGS Deidre Brown is of Ngapuhi and Ngati Kahu descent. She's been looking into the impact on Maori of the earliest European homes. The first European house in NZ was a gift to a Maori chief, Te Pahi, in Northland, given by Governor Philip Gidley King of New South Wales in 1806, and essentially it was going to be like a trade commission building. Te Pahi would bring it back to NZ, build it on one of his Northland islands, and trade agents would come there and learn about the flax trade. Unfortunately, the trade agents never came, so this building took on a different significance as a symbol of mana ` Te Pahi's connection to the emerging colony in Australia and his monopoly on European trade. The first European buildings became the source of strong mana for Maori. During the initial stages of settlement, Europeans often lived in Maori whare because they had no other building materials to hand. They found those highly adaptable buildings, but for Europeans, the goal was always to have a better life than you would if you'd stayed in Britain. So eventually, people moved out of those types of houses into colonial-style buildings. Colonial buildings were a whole new way of living in NZ. Imported tools allowed the raw materials of home-building to be adapted into forms that were familiar to settlers. Our earliest European homes were humble cottages ` simple shapes but unmistakably from another land. They're beautiful, kind of quaint, but pretty basic. You'd think they might at least have taken the insulation idea from Maori. I think I would've. There was a wide cultural gap, and Europeans thought that they knew best. Our first European colonists came here to farm. They built their homes in part to remind them of home, with the skills and style they brought with them. Canterbury was perfect ` flat land, knock down the trees, and away you go. All right. That's right. GEARS SHUDDER I'm trying. Yeah! Two Scottish brothers came here in the mid-1800s. They named the area Riccarton and the nearby river the Avon. Their surname is one of the most famous in Canterbury ` Deans. Goran, this is the oldest building on the Canterbury Plains. How old is it? Just after the Treaty of Waitangi ` 1843. It's in pretty good nick for an old girl, isn't it? It's pretty amazing, really. Antonia! Hello. How are you? Nice to see you. Nice to see you. This is Goran. Hello, Antonia. Nice to meet you. How are ya? Hello, Goran. Antonia's our guru on things Deans. The Deans name in Christchurch and Canterbury, it's quite famous. I'm assuming this is where Robbie's relatives came to` to reside. That's` Absolutely. It's a fascinating story, because of his great-great-grandfathers. John and William` I mean, they were trained in the legal profession, but they wanted to farm, and farming was really expensive in Scotland at the time, so they looked to emigrate to NZ. So they came out here in 1843. They were the first white settlers to settle here on the Canterbury Plains. This is ideal for setting up a really large established farm which is what they did. Once they moved here, they were establishing themselves in that Scottish manner or English manner that they were accustomed to. I guess houses is one way of saying, 'I still have that connection to the home country.' Absolutely. As you can see, it's really small. It's quite dark. Mm. I don't know how you'd live in something like this. I don't think they'd have insulation in the roof. No insulation. Yeah, that'd be pretty chilly, I imagine. There's that insulation thing again. It took us a while to pick that up from Maori. All the cooking would've been done on the camp oven. It's like a big wooden tent, then, in that case. Everybody's hanging out by the fireplace and cooking their food over it. On a cold, frosty Canterbury morning. That's a bit niggly. Is this the toilet in here? Uh, I don't think there would have been any plumbing in those days, but it is definitely some little stairs leading up to a couple of attic rooms. Are you serious? Duck down low. OK. After you, Goran. Wow. She wasn't kidding. Is it safe? I think so. Mind your head, Ken. It's, um, pretty tight in here. Ow! Did you hit it? Thanks! I did. Ow! Wow. This is spacious (!) Wow. It's pretty tight up here, isn't it? (LAUGHS) What? I'll just` I'll just go here. You'll just have to stand. There we go. So these were just two little attic bedrooms up here. These aren't bedrooms! Well, they were in those days. They did, at one stage, have over 35 settlers actually sleeping in this wee cottage, cos they couldn't put up their own temporary shelters. Aw, bugger off. How many? 35? 35 or more. How? Really? I mean, I'm a regular-sized human. I'm not gonna lie down, cos it's a bit dusty. But just imagine. That's one person lying down, trying to sleep. You can't fit 30-odd people in here. Well, they'd have been stacked in pretty tight, I imagine. Like sardines! You'd be warm. Mm. I tell you what, you'd know the person next to you by morning. TUI SING Hey, while we're talking about Deans' legacies, this kahikatea bush that we're walking through right now ` absolutely untouched by them. Untouched, not felled at all. They just left it as is. Maybe it's got something to do with the cold southerly that blows through. They wanted protection from that. Protecting the house? I think it's pretty cool. Well, you know, it's interesting, because most of the population of NZ back then ` the 1800s, 1860s, '70s, '80s ` were living on the land in the countryside, but we were very rapidly becoming an urban nation. Well, what were they living in, the people in the cities? Well, funny you should ask that, Goran. They were living in a house called the villa. But why is the villa, more than any other home type, still such a feature of our landscape? It really was a slum ` the rotting, rat-infested, mother ship of cockroaches. 1 As the world headed towards the 20th century, conditions in Britain were so bad that people left for the New World in their millions. Many thousands came to NZ. GENTLE STRING MUSIC In the 1870s, almost half of them had assistance from the NZ government, and 80% of them were under the age of 35. We were a young country in all sorts of ways. As NZ became increasingly urban, our cities were growing like crazy, and people needed places to live. Enter the villa, probably the best-known house type we have. But why the villa? What was so great about it as a house? Actually, it wasn't that great, but it was easy to build out of wood, and there was plenty of that here. We call them villas now, but back then they were just the house type of the time ` the original build-from-a-plan home. Yeah, look at this villa. Yeah. Oh yeah! There we go. Villa county. Villa World! Oh, there's a nice one! Jeremy Hansen is the editor of Home magazine, and although he lives in an inner-city apartment, he's very well read on the villa. I think villas are a really important touchstone for NZers, because so many of us have lived in them at one time of another or have known somebody that has. They were really NZ's first spec home ` these kitset homes built out of parts ordered from a catalogue. And they were thrown up in street after street after street. The villa was not that suitable for its original occupants. The only solution they provided is that they were able to be erected quickly, but otherwise, you know, they were draughty; they had these terrible kitchens on dirt floors out the back; this weird formality where if you were a visitor, you couldn't go past the front two rooms; the family life got relegated to the back part of the house; and also, they had no relationships to the sun or to their sites, so it just faced the street in a particular formal way. It seems the villa was no better than a raupo whare. In some ways, the villa was never a unique NZ house, you know, but it was a house that was appropriate to NZ then and the higher demand for housing that existed. But the villa has stayed with us through the generations. There are some things about villas that are great, such as the warmth of timber floors, you know, where our native forests that were cleared` felled and used in these homes. WHIMSICAL MUSIC And the decorative attention to detail. And also a sense of craftsmanship, something we don't often see in new buildings these days. So I think there's really good reason for us to hold on to villas in a sentimental way, but it's really important that we separate that sentiment from a really rational assessment of the way we need to live now. And then once you have those two elements in your head, you can combine them in a really interesting and creative way. Would you look at that? Another vanilla villa here in Grey Lynn. But this villa is anything but vanilla on the inside ` much like its owner, artist John Reynolds. ROCK MUSIC Gentlemen! The facade and the long villa corridor are just about all that remain after the wizardry of architect Malcolm Walker. This is the famous Malcolm Walker. Malcolm! A pleasure to meet you. Goran. Good afternoon. Malcolm. Gidday. John, what was it like living in here before Malcolm came along and revolutionised your life? It really a` a slum. It was an inner-city, uh, ghetto ` a rotting, rat-infested, mother ship of cockroaches. Uh, you know, a collection of firewood, wi` with a couple of rooms up the front. They were very usable rooms for that great start, but then come a couple of steps down the corridor, and it's bedlam. So you came down to this sort of living pit. The triumph was a rotten toilet. The floor had fallen away, and the toilet was suspended on its outlet pipe. Um, so it was, sort of, a cholera central sort of` (LAUGHS) The first thing we did was get rid of that. FUNKY MUSIC One of the great things Malcolm did early on was he turned up with a strange little bit of folded cardboard, which, um` he presented to us as, 'Well, here it is. Here's the` the house.' And, uh` And we were` Claire and I were looking at this. 'Oh!' I was buying time. You were buying time! ALL LAUGH And it looked like, you know, some origami project that a 3-year-old had done and walked away in disgust. KEN AND GORAN LAUGH But` But it was this, and it was Malcolm trying to resolve these issues of how do we go from box, box, box to` to something that's got some invention. Well, there's nothing like a restriction, is there,... Yeah. ...to make you think? Everything in this house was big, and everything was generous. So we've taken the same footprint of a villa but then made it a lot more complex and made it much more user-friendly. FUNKY BASSLINE Getting light into the middle of the corridor would make a hell of a difference, and splitting the corridor into two so you don't end up in this hospital ward with doors down it, and then you get big sense of walls. You're not just making something for the sake of it. You're making it do something. So you can get quite interesting results. When you're a family, you tend to congregate around the kitchen, dining and this, sort of, living space, so what we've got here is the 21st century, what we` the light, the north, the airiness. And yet we still have the privacy. Malcolm's got the big door in the hallway,... Yeah. ...so you can separate off sleeping and non-sleeping and all that sort of thing. From the street, you know, it's got that wedding cake thing that it does, and, uh, then from then on in, it's just running into the 21st century, you know? We say ta-ta to the 19th. FUNKY BASSLINE CONTINUES Because this is Grey Lynn, were you scared to change the front of it? No. But everybody else has got the same front of the house. It's` It's almost like` like the blues, you know, in music. It's got a really simple pattern, but there's just thousands of different variations, and` and, you know, you can do anything with it, and you've got this core of what you're doing. Whereas, you go to some of the suburbs, and everyone's desperately trying to be different without having a same core. But all houses are boxes, I mean, of some sort or another, and it's, you know` it's` it's making the box work and do what it's supposed to do to live in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. For people, not just a thing. There's so much work that goes into it, watching Malcolm and his team, but that delivers every day to the max. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Exac` Do it` But don't do it yourself! Get someone in! ALL LAUGH Yeah, get` get` get someone! Get a professional! 'I can do this. Oh.' Awesome house. I totally get that. Gut it and start again. And John seems to have the perfect home for his lifestyle. MAJESTIC MUSIC So the villa is endlessly adaptable. They are timber-framed. You can knock them about to accommodate the way we live today. But why are villas so important to NZers here and now? It was something that we appropriated from Victorian London and adapted it to NZ, so the villa is really important because it's the beginning of the story of the NZ house. So if the villa is the commoner's home, where did rich NZers live? A modest country home (!) ALL LAUGH Yes. We have a bit of trouble finding our glasses occasionally and things like that. ALL LAUGH CLASSICAL MUSIC NZ in the 1890s was a story of two parts. While cities were growing at a ferocious pace, settlers with large tracts of land were reaping the benefits of their early purchases. The influence of Victorian England was strong. Around the country, a new house type emerged ` elitist, maybe, but definitely something unique. The landed gentry of NZ were beginning to make their statements. I've got the feeling this is going to be good. This home grew from the humble beginnings of the Deans Cottage in Christchurch. Getting in early proved to be hugely successful for the Deans family. The farm prospered, and as more Europeans arrived, the Deans family needed a home that reflected who they were. Jane Deans, widowed with a young son after only one year of marriage, was determined to create a legacy for her family. ANTONIA: Jane was the daughter of a lord back in Scotland, so I guess she was accustomed to a different type of lifestyle. Originally, it had 40 rooms and 13 to 14 bedrooms. Final stage was completed in 1900, and I think it really exemplifies the financial and social status of the Deans family here in Christchurch. Antonia's knowledge of the Deans family brings the whole story alive for me. And what a grand home they ended up in. So, come on into Jane's morning room. This is the original part of the house. Where we meet Catherine, who proves archaeology can be funky. This is Ken and Goran. Hi. Catherine. Hi. Nice to meet you. Catherine, how are you? How are you? I want to know more about what would it have been like for the people back in the day to live in a house like this? So, there's no electricity. There's no internal plumbing. You've gotta carry the water into the house to heat it up. You've also got to then carry it out when you're done with it. No flushing toilets, nothing like that. You can imagine it would've been fairly cold. You know, these fires are notorious for putting out, you know, tiny amounts of heat. These walls would've provided some insulation, but it's a lot colder than what we would consider comfortable. I mean, we take those things so much for granted. It would've been an upgrade from the Deans Cottage, though, surely. Yes. You've got a lot more external light coming in with the big windows to let the sun shine in, and you've got more room to move, and you've also got privacy. And you've got beautiful surroundings. You know, you've got lovely wallpaper. Mm. It would be very` Yeah, it would be a huge step up. But even with the upgrade, it still must've been a hard life. Jane, she was an interesting woman, because she was well-educated back in Scotland, so she did come over here with an advantage over, perhaps, some other people. But it was just her hard, Protestant upbringing that enabled her to run this farm, and she remained a widow here for 57 years, so, um, that's kind of real dedication, isn't it? So she never found anybody else? No, not` obviously not as good as John. SOLEMN MUSIC These grand homes are an important connection to the past. The really good ones have stood the test of time. Alberton, on the slopes of Mt Albert, is the best remaining example of a 19th-century fashionable mansion in Auckland. MAJESTIC MUSIC It looks like something out of the Raj. An Indian palace, maybe? The Kerr Taylors were Scots, but they'd grown up in India. Ah, those Scots. A cunning bunch. As Auckland grew, the Kerr Taylors gradually carved up the farm and made huge profits on the sale of land for all those villas. That sounds a lot like what's happening today ` rich people making huge profits from selling homes. It's a long way from a three-bedroom do-up in Birkdale. Fine if you've got hundreds of servants running around after you, but I feel like we're visiting museums. These houses are just not practical to live in any more. Well, some are still lived in and loved for what they are and what they represent. The art of gracious Victorian living was never better practised than at Oruawharo, a country mansion in the heart of the Hawke's Bay. It's interesting in another way too. There was a fashion at the time for creating buildings that looked like they were made of stone even though they were 100% native timber. That's just weird. If you're going to build in wood, make it look like wood. Ah, but most substantial Victorian buildings back in the mother country were stone, and the apron strings were still very tight. Hi, Ken. How are you? Good to see you again. You too, yeah. Peter and his wife, Dianne, are gradually restoring Oruawharo to its former glory, both as a home and a venue for weddings and other functions. We moved here in 2000. It's our retirement folly. What do you mean by that? There was talk about it being demolished. So we came in, and I think within less than a minute we'd decided it shouldn't be demolished, so we ended up buying it. A modest country home (!) ALL LAUGH Yes, yes, but it does grow on you. We have a bit of trouble finding our glasses occasionally and things like that. ALL LAUGH MAJESTIC STRING MUSIC Goodness me! Look at that ceiling, Ken. Is that original, Peter? That is indeed, yeah. It wasn't quite like that in the year 2000. There was a lot of residual oil, soot from the lamps, from the fires, and there was a fair bit of wisteria in amongst the fretwork up there that had come in. ALL LAUGH STATELY STRING MUSIC Pretty amazing stair, isn't it? The attention to detail. Look at the craftsmanship. This is one of four staircases. This is the most impressive. The sort of craftsmen that made these things considered themselves to be masters, and they regularly made a deliberate error in their work just to prove they were not perfect, and the one in this staircase is the third panel there that's been installed upside down. Oh yeah, so it is. CLASSICAL MUSIC So how many people were living in this place? You've got a family and staff? Yep, 12 staff lived in here ` in the staff area, of course. And the family, most of the time it was down to about two, because the children were educated in England. Just a little bit excessive. Uh, well, two of us live here today, and, um, we think it's rather comfortable, actually. ALL LAUGH CLASSICAL MUSIC CONTINUES This place has gone from being a liability to something which is valued hugely by the community and the region, and we get visitors here from all over the world. It's a real labour of love, isn't it? That's a` a polite way of putting it, yes. A labour of love and capital. There's some things in life that are more valuable than money, aren't they? I mean` Lots of things. CLASSICAL MUSIC FADES You call that a cup? This is a cup. What are the benefits of drinking such a small cup of coffee anyway? You've got the novel. This is the poetry. This is the essence. I'm tired of you speaking in riddles, dammit. How do you say that place name? Oh-roo-ah-wharu? Arua-wharu? Oruawharo. Big place. Don't get it. I mean, imagine how difficult it would be to heat and clean that thing. Life doesn't always come back to cost. This is a couple that have an interest in preserving a little bit of our cultural heritage. If you actually look at heritage and history, there are some connections there that actually give us messages about who we are and where we're going. OK. OK. Just a thought. Thanks for sharing. REFRESHING MUSIC A strong connection with heritage and history, and you still see it as part of our homes today. There's the porch or veranda. Yeah, that's right. All the home types we've seen have them, right back to the whare. It's a response to our climate and the way we live. From earliest times, we needed a place out of the rain ` or sunshine ` but still connected to the house, somewhere to greet people, to take off your boots without getting wet. Perhaps it's the forerunner to today's indoor-outdoor flow. A particularly elegant example is this one designed by my mate Rewi Thompson. These veranda spaces are incredibly useful, especially on a day like this. I'm interested on your thoughts as to whether you think it was a Maori form, or is it postcolonial? Oh, I think it's both. As Islanders, we have a great relationship with the outdoor world ` becomes that traditional space between inside and outside, becomes a space that is social, but also becomes a space where it welcomes people into the house as well. And so you can be outside in the sun, or you can be outside protected from the elements. You've got the best of both worlds. Very similar to the paepae at the whare. So, have your doors open, your inside is still connected to your outside. It's the perfect NZ space. But not all of our landscape is ideal for home-building. Like, how do you build a villa on Wellington's hills? It's outrageous to be built up to the street boundary on three sides. CLASSICAL MUSIC Wellington officially became the capital of NZ in 1865 because of its position in the middle of the country and the sheltered harbour. But the centre of Wellington is like the bottom of a bowl surrounded by hills, and if you wanted to live near town, it's those hills where the houses had to be built. Man, I've been down to Wellington a few times. Came down to watch the All Whites play Bahrain. Usually, the wind's ripping through, rain's coming in sideways, but not today. Look at that. Stunning day, isn't it? Yeah. Absolute stunner. It's a hilly city, isn't it? Yeah. It's one of the first things you notice, eh? Yeah, yeah. And that actually posed an awful lot of problems when they were colonising it. And a lot of the early survey work was done by boats in the harbour, and they assumed, quite wrongly, that it was a relatively flat city, and we ended up with a whole lot of sites that were tricky to build on. Well you know what they say, When you assume something, you make an ass out of 'u' and 'me'. You get it? Got it. Yeah. The first really unique NZ home style was forced on us by the landscape. Architects had to design homes to fit on the steep slopes of Wellington, and that meant innovation. You've got these sites which weren't rectilinear. Pardon? Oblong? Oh, yeah, got you now. Yeah. And so what they had to do was, kind of, fit, shoehorn houses on to them, and so you get these really really weird shapes. This is a classic house, where it's built right on the boundary. OK. Just chuck it on the hill and see what happens? (KNOCKS) Hi, Chris. Greetings! How are you? Hello, gidday. Chris, this is Goran. Hello, Chris! How are ya? Hello, Goran. Welcome. Welcome. Come on in. Thank you very much. Will do! Chris is a conservation architect. He was instrumental in preserving this and the surrounding houses as a heritage area. We bought it as students. We've been here since 1970. Those were` When students could buy a house. (LAUGHS) Well, at a giveaway price. Student loan now. Those days are gone. Long gone. Long gone, yes. (LAUGHS) REFRESHING MUSIC We thought we'd be here for two or three years, and then we'd move to a serious house, and here we are, what, 45 years later. Our friends have moved to serious houses, you know? Oh! (LAUGHS) They grew up. (LAUGHS) Whereas you didn't. You stayed young and hip, trendy with your awesome sofa with the beer holder. That same couch has been there for most of those 40-plus years. This is a joke house, really. It's outrageous to be built up to the street boundary on three sides. But if you wanted a flat site, it was hand excavation, basically, so it was sensible in terms of manpower and resources to build to the land as it was found, so it forces the design into interesting shapes and interesting forms that go to make character and community, really. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there ` character. This oozes character. What do you call it? Well, if you go to the architect's drawings from 1905, you'll find that the architect himself called it a cottage. Now, it doesn't really equate with what we understand as a cottage, you know? Two rooms and a lean-to out the back and, you know, little pitched roof. It's built in the period when villas were being built, and it has some of the attributes of a villa, so maybe you could call it a villa. Would you call it a villa? I think it has got some of those characteristics ` the double-hung windows, kind of, the front door, but wildly different in that it doesn't have bay windows, verandas and that sort of thing. Have you given it a name? Oh, well, we've given it a name. That's easy enough. It's called The Wedge. Uh, It's built right hard up to the street boundary, and the street formed a wedge, so the` the house forms a wedge. The Wedge, a villa that had to be redesigned to fit on to Wellington's hills. Now, that's starting to sound like a Kiwi response ` a NZ home. Still no insulation, though. No desire to learn from the very sensible and practical Maori. Goran, cheers, mate. Yeah, cheers, Ken. We've come a long way. Yeah. So what have we seen so far? We've, kind of, seen the evolution from something that was here ` indigenous ` to something that we imported from, essentially, the UK. The early Maori architecture, they used the materials around, and they adapted things to actually create an environment that was perfect for them. We've moved through, and we've seen the early cottages. I still can't get over the size of that Deans Cottage and the number of people that they'd have living in their roof. You know, 30, 35 people in that roof. It's crazy. I get a sense that we've barely scraped the surface. Scratched the surface. You scrape it. A scrape or a scratch. It's the same thing. We're removing something from the top. What school did you go to again? Edgewater College, Pakuranga, East Auckland. Didn't learn a great deal. I think there's a lot more information that we need to get into that head. The 20th century was a big sea change in the way the NZ home developed. Mm. So there's a lot more to come, and it means I've gotta spend a lot more time with you. We're not gonna start rooming together, though, eh? I'm gonna keep my distance. Good. Next week on The NZ Home ` Don't be a house snob. Goran sees the forerunner to his home. I still can't get over the fact that this house is 110 years old. We visit California! Welcome to Los Angeles! And we both get an art lesson. I'm all for upsizing things, but this is a little too big for me.