Surface Tension

Lance and Nicola Herbst design a crisp house at Muriwai around art, books and some beautiful native trees.

- Margo White

Brian Carter and Clare Bradley had lived for the best part of the past two decades in a five-bedroom house in Remuera, Auckland, but the children had grown up, gone to university and, as Carter puts it, he “didn’t want to die in Remuera”. Carter, a barrister, and Bradley, a lawyer who now works as a business executive, considered various properties on a number of coastlines around and beyond Auckland, before buying land at Muriwai on the west coast of Auckland. Unsure if they wanted to build a holiday home on it or live there, they rented a house nearby to get a sense of the commute. “We found that if we timed it right, we could do the drive in 35 minutes,” says Carter. (That was five years ago, when the traffic was lighter – this year the couple decided to also buy a crash pad in town.)

Having decided to make Muriwai home, they approached Lance and Nicola Herbst, architects known for their exquisitely crafted baches, including their own on Great Barrier Island. Their work regularly features in this magazine and they won Home of the Year 2016 for a house on the Coromandel Peninsula. “We were aware of their work,” says Carter, “their approach to materials, and their sheer imagination. Everyone talks about ‘indoor/outdoor’ but they have a particularly sensitive approach to the landscape.”