Architectural design is seeing reality.
I have a love-hate relationship with villas. I grew up in a big villa at the top of a hill in Epsom. It was cold and dark, and I remember there was a very fine dust that would fall from the ceiling. The cold mornings, the rattling windows on a stormy night, my father, not a perfect handyman, annually repairing and repainting something. The ladders came out and I knew it was spring.
I have since owned, lived in and worked in several villas, the gods laughing at me. I live in one today but its fully rebuilt, warm and bright and facing the sun.
What I do like about villas is the way people adapt them to suit their lifestyle. It’s not always aesthetically pleasing or in sympathy, but it shows life and that houses are for living in. I like the personality. Villas are more forgiving than modern houses mainly because we all think we know what a villa looks like and so accept it without judgement whereas with a modern house you are forced to judge it: do I like it, or don’t I like it?
But villas aren’t all the same. In fact, they can be similar but are all very different. In the old days when you built a villa you could have the rooms and corridor widened or narrowed, add bays, verandas, bigger, fancier windows, and have more detailing, all dependant on your budget.
What I do like about villas is the way people adapt them to suit their lifestyle.
People often say to me that villa is nice, and I suggest they take away the mature garden blocking some of the view and take a second look. Often, they are surprised by the awkward proportions.
I have never understood why villas have 3.4m ceilings and 2m-high internal doors.
Dad came off the phone one day, put a new door in the hall and made Mum a makeshift kitchen on the side veranda so aunty and children had somewhere to live after she left her husband. Architecturally terrible, but practical and human. Just imagine how many council rules Dad broke.
paul@leuschkekahn.co.nz
021 894 895
leuschkekahn.co.nz
