More Than An Elegant Shed

At Moncks Bay in Christchurch, the last house designed by the late David Mitchell is both playful and rational.

- Matt Philp

The welcome mat at Olle and Clare Enberg’s seaside Christchurch home hints at a couple of things to expect beyond the front door. Woven, improbably, from 46 metres of rope into an endless Turk’s Head knot, it’s a nod to the subtle maritime theme of this 18-month-old house, the last designed by the late David Mitchell, of Auckland-based Mitchell Stout Dodd Architects.

It’s also not a bad metaphor for the masterful way the architect has condensed so much living into such a tricky space – a pinched 312 square metre section between the road and Moncks Bay, with close neighbours and tight height-to-boundary restrictions. Step inside, jag right, and there – through a large awning window that you open using a rope resembling a sailboat’s mainsheet – is the fast-flowing estuary. People like to say of a house built close to the water: ‘You could catch a fish from the deck’. In the Enbergs’ case, that’s a statement of fact – they routinely observe people casting a line from the narrow grass strip that separates their boundary from the water’s edge.

Before the Canterbury earthquakes, Olle, a master mariner and marine surveyor, and Clare, a Montessori teacher, owned a house on the heights between Moncks Bay and Sumner. When that was red-stickered, they bought a ramshackle fisherman’s cottage on this section and drew up plans to renovate. Three days before they were due to sign a building contract, water from broken infrastructure across the road flooded the place. They decided to bulldoze and build anew.