Bon Accord Harbour is long and deep, cutting more than halfway through Kawau Island, at the northern edge of the Hauraki Gulf. You travel by boat from Sandspit across Kawau Bay and through the heads, into a harbour that’s sheltered on three sides from the prevailing winds.
It’s the harbour that boat owners make for during inclement summer weather. The rest of the year, it’s quiet – especially Harris Bay, next to Schoolhouse Bay, where you’ll find a bach designed by Sam Caradus and Ken Crosson of Crosson Architects for an Auckland family. It’s a fetching spot. “You’ve got the intensity of Schoolhouse as you make your way in,” says Caradus, “and then you come into Harris and a lovely handful of houses facing the water.”
While he was at university, Caradus taught all three of the owners’ children to swim. He was reasonably fresh in the design game when the family mentioned they’d bought a site on Kawau. They had admired Crosson’s work on coastal sites, and said they’d like him to design their holiday home.
One of the owners had spent her childhood around Kawau – coming for a picnic by boat from Stanmore Bay or sailing around the Hauraki Gulf; later, she attended school camps here with her children. They wanted a beachfront property – something that was really only possible on an island – and they wanted to rough it. “If I want carpet underfoot I can have that in Auckland,” she says. “We wanted it to feel like a DOC hut.”
Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 de HOME.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 de HOME.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
The Past Is Present
In exhibitions at public galleries around the country, artists reflect on our collective, individual and cultural histories.
Why I Walk Carl Douglas
How the experience of walking reveals our world to us and informs our sense of our place in it.
My Favourite Building Chlöe Swarbrick
Built on Auckland’s Karangahape Road in the 1920s, St Kevin’s Arcade has served as vocational inspiration and a meeting place for the Green MP since she was a teenager.
Humble Special
PAC Studio designs a home on a tiny budget in the bush above the Kaipara Harbour.
Modern Love
Assembly Architects draws on lightweight Californian modernism to craftan elegant mountain retreat.
Family Tree
On a leafy site in the Waikato, Tane Cox crafts a subtle home for three generations
LOW PROFILE
Sometimes, strict covenants can be a blessing in disguise.
Fine Line
A house in a vineyard by Stuart Gardyne shows country living need not be rustic.
Elegant Shed
Ben Daly rehabilitates a farm building with a long family history on the Canterbury Plains.
Perfect Pitch
An encampment by an inlet casually inhabits land at Tawharanui.