- An award-winning waterfront home in Auckland's Westmere was snapped up six weeks after hitting the market.
- The four-bedroom house, built for sound healer Jason Friedlander, had a CV of $10 million.
- The sale price is confidential, and joins several other high-profile deals on the street.
An award-winning house on one of Auckland's richest streets has sold within six weeks of hitting the market.
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Kellands agent Martin Dobson told OneRoof he was unable to disclose the sale price of the four-bedroom luxury property on Rawene Avenue, saying the deal was subject to confidentiality agreements.
Dobson said the property, which has a 2021 CV of $10 million, had attracted strong interest during the campaign.
“It is fantastic to sell in six weeks. There was local interest and some expat enquiries, but they came in too late.
“It was a very effective campaign that targeted the right people. The architectural design, the location - which is pretty tightly held - all appealed. That side of Rawene Avenue has such an architectural collection."
The house was designed by Stevens Lawson Architects with a brief that asked for a conversation between architecture and nature. Photo / Supplied
Owner Jason Friedlander ran his sound therapy clinic from the property. Photo / Supplied
The luxury home, built mostly from concrete, glass and timber, won a New Zealand Institute of Architects award for its designers, Stevens Lawson Architects, in 2018.
Properties on Rawene Avenue rarely appear on the open market, with OneRoof counting just nine in the last four years. Also joining Dobson's listing in 2024 was another award-winning, architect-designed house with a CV of $10m. It too has found a buyer in the last few weeks, although the listing agents have declined to comment.
Both houses are just a few doors away from the mansion that ZURU Toys billionaire Anna Mowbray and her husband, former All Blacks player Ali Williams, are close to finishing. They bought their Westmere property in 2020 for $24m from Kiwi film director Andrew Adamson and are currently battling neighbours for permission to install a helicopter pad.
The owner of Dobson's listing, Jason Friedlander spoke to OneRoof when the property first went on the market, saying there hadn’t been a day in his nine years at the house when he didn’t wake up wanting to phone his architect and thank him.
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He said the “earthy”, “soulful” home met his brief so closely that it had been a constant joy to live in.
Friedlander and his former partner fell in love with the 1077sqm plot of land in 2011, buying it for $3.485m.
“We just knew that this piece of land deserved something extraordinary built on it, and we bought it with that in mind,” Friedlander told OneRoof. “I just knew instantly that Nicholas Stevens [of Stevens Lawson Architects] was going to design it for us.”
The build was finished in 2016 but Friedlander said it had been a journey getting to the end point.
“We were great fans of a hotel chain called Aman. And we were in Aman in Arizona. and we looked at each other and went, ‘Yeah, this is what we’re looking for’. This real conversation with nature. We saw where nature stopped and this building started blended so beautifully together. A dance with architecture and nature. All of a sudden it was, ‘We’re on the right track’.”
The property is both striking and heavy in its use of sustainable materials. Photo / Supplied
The garden space is a sanctuary within a sanctuary. Photo / Supplied
Friedlander, who uses sound “to assist people in healing deep trauma and to awaken to their authentic truth”, was inspired by the temples and monasteries of Asia, which played into the design.
“My brief to the architects was sanctuary,” he told OneRoof. “It wasn’t about, ‘Look at me’. I also wanted a house that was very sustainable. I wanted it to be properly earthed. I wanted it to be a very healthy house, [and] the materials had to be as healthy as possible.”
In the advertising for the property, architect Nicholas Stevens, said: “Our client was committed to nourishment of the soul and our role was to interpret this in a New Zealand context with a house that belonged to this place. We aimed to create an earthy and soulful home, a place of spiritual calm and a peaceful haven in the city.”
One of the unusual aspects of the design is that the home has no gutters. The water runs off the shingle roof and is collected and channeled into a small man-made stream and shower water is collected for reuse in the toilets.
“My landscape gardener planted natives that you would normally find along waterways,” Friedlander said.
The home doesn’t have a steel structure either. “Steel can upset people. So, we had to be really creative around how do we support the house. How do we make it strong.”
Whilst the brief was specific in some areas, the architect was given a lot of flexibility as well, Friedlander said.
“The architects really had this opportunity to create deeply from their hearts, what they wanted to do, because I wasn’t trying to be an architect as well,” said Friedlander. “I just wanted them to create something beautiful. Something peaceful.”
Friedlander told OneRoof he was selling up to move to Northland to be even closer to nature. “I changed professions, left the corporate world, to work on a more spiritual life. So now I live in nature all around.”
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* Additional reporting, Diana Clement
