Brick By Brick

A designer creates a fortress-like home in Birkenhead Point, Auckland, for her young family.

Sophie Wylie, Artifact— “I live here with my husband and our three children – a five-year-old, four-year-old and two-and-a-half year old. The kids love to play outside so it was interesting having a really urban home for them – the courtyard works well, with enough surface area for them to play. We also have parks around us, which makes a difference. The kids colonise the sunken living room as their snug and playroom.

It’s quite a big house, with four bedrooms on a small plot of land. There’s a neighbouring commercial building, two houses behind us, and a heritage overlay, so it was a challenge to work with. It’s a constrained site with an efficient build in the sense that it has been extruded into a large, two-storey, walled north-eastern courtyard house. The 260-square-metre floorplan includes the garage, and the 400-square-metre site includes the driveway on a shared lot.