A striking concrete and glass mansion built by the Kiwi architecture firm that created the Sky Tower has hit the market for sale.
The six-bedroom property joins a string of multi-million-dollar mansions for sale on Auckland's Remuera Road and is certain to excite fans of modern architecture.
Listing agent Sarah Liu, from Bayleys, wouldn't put a price tag on the Craig Moller-designed home but indicated it was worth well above $20 million.
“We’ve had experts who say that to build this house today would cost $30,000 per square metre – that’s over $20m for the house. And then there’s the land,” she said.
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“We’ve already had several viewings of the house. People have all loved it. Many of them collect art or antiques. These buyers want contemporary, not older houses. And the name Craig Moller is important to them.”
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Moller, whose firm Moller Architects is best known for its work on the Sky Tower , started on the house in 2002 and didn't finish until 2005. He describes his creation as “encapsulating the idea of the large gracious houses that populate the Remuera ridge in a modern and contemporary manner”.
The vendor told OneRoof she invited Moller back to the house soon after she bought it from the original owners in 2009 for just under $8m.
“I wanted to hear his ideas. I respected it as an art piece in itself, the craftsmanship of the building, the how and the why,” she said.
“He said that this was such a beautiful long section, that he wanted to build a house that was ‘human’, part of the natural landscape. So wherever you look, you are connected with the landscape or the sky or the fresh air.”
The entry hall has 6m high ceilings, its gallery walls designed to showcase the art collection of past and present owners. Photo / Supplied
The informal living room, dining room and kitchen. Photo / Supplied
The vendor, who did not want to be named for privacy reasons but was happy to be described as a big supporter of the arts, had been looking for six years for a home for her family.
She told OneRoof she had been drawn to the chunky, strong look of Swedish contemporary buildings and, after nearly 15 years of living in the house, still admires the simplicity of the building’s engineering details.
“But it is very complex, the way the negative detailing works, the solid oak inserted into the door jambs, the way the doors slide and disappear.”
The house’s first owners were also art collectors, so this owner has naturally found places for her collection, which includes works by Bill Hammond, John Reynolds and Michael Parekōwhai. She particularly delights in the double height entry lobby (some six metres high) where the glass wall allows her to contrast one of Parekōwhai’s signature pieces, the Kapa Haka fibreglass security guard, facing off with a traditional buddha sitting in the garden outside (“my two guardians”, she said).
The house was built to Moller’s commercial standards, including a commercial-grade air-conditioning, heavy duty glass and top of the line German bathroom fittings. The original oak and aluminium kitchen, which the owner didn’t want to touch, features a grunty Viking gas cooker.
“We try to respect the architectural design, the silvers and grey and oak featured in the rest of the house," she said.
The views stretch from Rangitoto and the harbour around to the Sky Tower. Photo / Supplied
The master bedroom on the upper floor. Photo / Supplied
The house was built to Moller’s commercial standards, including a commercial-grade air-conditioning, heavy duty glass and top of the line German bathroom fittings. The original oak and aluminium kitchen, which the owner didn’t want to touch, features a grunty Viking gas cooker.
“We try to respect the architectural design, the silvers and grey and oak featured in the rest of the house," she said.
“Craig said the house is like a woman with her very, very, high-end luxury. A very elegant lady, she just has one very good thing, and the house is the same – consistent use of concrete, timber and glass."
The entry and stairs are finished in travertine marble, there are wide-plank French oak floors in the living rooms and new carpet in the bedrooms.
The house’s scale is striking – the ceilings are 3.5 metres high, the sliding glass walls are floor to ceiling, the deck a massive 47m metres long. The view runs from Rangitoto and Devonport across to the Sky Tower, with the only visible neighbour the tree-lined playgrounds of Kings Prep next door (the owner said her sons would try to look for her from their French classroom on the edge of the grounds).
From the entry court off the discreet driveway, the main five-bedroom 629sqm home sits on one side with a garage and self-contained 60sqm guest studio on the other.
The ground floor living that stretches over 45m long is divided into formal and informal halves. The huge formal lounge features a grand piano (international jazz star Nathan Haines is a frequent visitor and player) and a wood-burning fireplace, while the informal side includes the kitchen, dining and family room, and opens to both the front balconies and the serene courtyard garden.
The owner told OneRoof the house has comfortably hosted parties and art launches of 100 guests, events for Auckland Art Gallery, arts fairs, residencies and fundraisers. As well as Haines, guests have included New York/New Zealand artist Billy Apple, filmmaker Vincent Ward and many established and emerging young artists from China.
The upper-floor gallery leads to five bedrooms. Photo / Supplied
A work by Michael Parekōwhai shares guardianship of the home with the buddha in the fountain behind. Photo / Supplied
The owner relishes the retreat offered by two wood-lined rooms tucked away from public spaces, the library/media room with floor-to-ceiling shelves and the adjoining office with another wood fire and doors to the garden.
The lower floor has a self-contained party room that, when her teenage boys eventually left home, became a space for the owner’s meetings with artists. It also makes a huge party room, with kitchen bar having room for hundreds of glasses and a temperature-controlled wine room, with more glass walls opening to the lawns, swimming pool and rows of clipped buxus balls.
Upstairs there are five generous bedrooms, three of them with ensuite bathrooms, closets and more of the views across the valley.
“When I was looking at houses before, there were some on clifftops looking at the water. But this view is always changing, the view across the valley, the harbour, the island. You get nature and you get human work too,” the owner said.
“Even one or two years ago, I couldn’t imagine moving out of this house. It feels so solid and safe and very quiet, but I can walk up to the cafes, my sons could walk to school or the train station. But the fruit is mature, it is time.”
With her sons now based in New York, the owner is ready to go. “After 16 years it was a very important part of my life journey. But I’m quietly exploring a different energy.”
Agent Liu said: “Everywhere you look, this property has been finished to exceptional standards of quality,” adding that this is “arguably Auckland’s finest address”.
The property joins four other Remuera Road mansions – an unprecedented number – all looking for buyers with $20m to $30m to spend. While these properties have combined CVs of $88m, agents are expecting each of their properties to sell for more than that.
A house by architect Julian Guthrie on Burwood Road, Remuera, sold for $20.6m last year. Photo / Supplied
An Arts & Crafts mansion on 532 Remuera Road has an asking price of $32m. Photo / Supplied
A 900sqm five-bedroom Roy Binney-designed house at 532 Remuera Road has an asking price of $32m, well more than its $12.8m CV.
Closer to Remuera village, just two houses away, a five-bedroom Simon Carnachan-designed house at 298 Remuera Road has a tender closing May 30. The house, which has a CV of $25.5m, shares a tennis court fence with Remuera’s most expensive house, a Sumich-designed house that went for $29m in December 2021.
An exquisitely renovated five-bedroom Arts and Crafts house at 226 Remuera Road aims to smash residential auction prices when it goes under the hammer on June 22 (the current record is $12.8m and the property’s CV is $9.8m, but agents say buyers are likely to ignore both numbers).
Next door, the five-bedroom 1980s house at 228 Remuera Road with a pool, tennis court and second entrance on a 4000sqm section is expecting “a lot higher” than its $25m CV, .
Liu said that the high-end market in Auckland was strong, and that she currently has eight properties on her books, some as off-market listings, looking for buyers with between $10m and $20m to spend.
While Arts & Crafts mansions, built when Remuera was the home of huge farm estates, were typical, contemporary houses were less common in this blue-chip strip, Liu said.
Liu, who sold a concrete and glass five-bedroom mansion on Shore Road designed by name architects Fearon Hay for close to $13m in February this year, said she knew of only one other such place on Remuera Road.
She said that the Shore Road property selling for nearly twice its CV was not unusual, earlier telling OneRoof that buyers of these high-end “artwork” properties knew the values were not reflected in the council numbers.
“At this high end, the CV doesn’t take into account the architecture, the view, the interior quality.”
A year ago, another contemporary glass and concrete home on Burwood Crescent, Remuera, this one by Julian Guthrie, fetched $20.6m. It had sold six years earlier for $18m.
- The Craig Moller-designed home on Remuera Road, Remuera, Auckland, is for sale by negotiation
* A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Craig Moller designed the Sky Tower. The Sky Tower was actually designed by his father, Gordon Moller.
