Architects have been drawn to a quirky Claude Megson-designed Auckland townhouse being marketed for sale by Sarah-Jayne Kingston and Gill Macdonald of Barfoot and Thompson.
The late Megson, a renowned Kiwi architect, had a love of building boxes on boxes and this home is a great example, Kingston says.
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“He liked to put a little village together with these little boxes and make the house centrally viewed into the main living area.”
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The current owner is an architect who had an affinity with Megson’s design, something which has attracted other architects to come and view the two-bedroom home at 54A Hapua Street, in Remeura.
“We were inundated with architecture and design-type enthusiasts for the first weekend of open homes,” Kingston says.
Architects like architecturally-designed houses: “They all follow each other, they all know what each other are doing and it was sort of like a meeting of architect groupies.”
The 1970s house has been stylishly presented and was renovated and extended in 2004. Photos / Supplied
Houses designed by known architects can also add a premium onto a property and make a great investment, she says.
“I think it does and that’s why the current owners could see the value in it.”
The double grammar zone townhouse, which has a 2017 CV of $1.14 million, was designed in the 1970s.
It has been renovated and extended and is on trend with the tiny house movement but while compact it’s big on features and character with vaulted ceilings, exposed timber, steel-framed skylights and big sliding doors leading out to the garden.
The kitchen is capped by an elaborate church-like roof. Photos / Supplied
“It’s like this huge tiny home movement that’s going on now had its day way back then.”
Bindi Norwell, chief executive at the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, says good architecture is more than just design and aesthetics but something that can add significant value to a property and enhance the lifestyle of the individual or family living there.
Megson houses in Remuera typically fetch top dollar when they come to market. A four-bedroom home designed by Megson at 149a Arney Road sold in December for $5.95 million - $1 million above CV and $3.47 million more than what it previously sold for in 2010. And Megson's "Wong House" in Warrington Avenue sold as a do-up in 2018 for $2.75 million.
“Quality architecture and well-known architects are often sought out by high-end buyers who understand the long-term value of architecturally-designed properties," she says.
The Megson-designed 149a Arney Road sold in December for $5.95 million. Photo / Supplied
“Whilst it is difficult to put a quantifiable price on the value-add of using a well-known architect, these sorts of properties always achieve a good return come sale time.”
Megson died in 1994 but was an enormous presence in Auckland’s architecture community, says Professor Andrew Barrie of Auckland University in an article in the Broadsheet of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Institute of Architects.
“Best known for his work prior to the mid-1970s, Megson is usually cast as an ‘individual romantic architect’, building on the legacy of figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn and Aldo van Eyck,” Barrie writes.
“Megson’s modernism was utopian, one in which the drive to abstraction was moderated by the desire to create an architecture responsive to place and occasion.
“He designed believing he was in contact with the transcendent truths of human and psychological life, the meaning inherent in the daily routines and rituals of family life – sleeping, washing, cooking, eating and so on.
“The result was an architecture of poetic intensity; an intensity that could be overpowering.”
In lectures to students, clients and fellow architects Megson talked about what he believed were the “fundamental and unquestionable” truths of architecture, writes Professor Barrie.
“He spoke of harmonious and subtly modulated relationships between spaces, proportion, colour and texture, qualities of light and shadow. He constantly reworked these basic concerns and his own formal constants, developing each house into a complex whole; in many respects, his architecture changed little over the 30 years of his design career.”
The property for sale at 54A Hapua St goes to auction on October 14.
