Pete Bossley Has Designed A House That Floats Among The Pōhutukawa On Takapuna Beach

Aucklands Takapuna Beach looms large in the lives of the owners of this Bossley Architects-designed home.

- Penny Lewis

As a teenager, Helen Gillespie was a volunteer lifeguard at Takapuna, travelling over the Auckland Harbour Bridge from her childhood home in Westmere, a modernist house designed by her late father, architect Barton Gillespie of Wilson Moodie & Gillespie.

Later, Gillespie headed offon her OE and met Canadian Jack Rosen. In 1977, she brought him home to New Zealand and Takapuna became his favourite beach, too. The couple married under the banana palm in the atrium of her parents’ home and they headed back to Canada, eventually returning to New Zealand with their young family in 1992. They moved to the North Shore and lived in Browns Bay, then Campbells Bay, but Takapuna was their end goal. They eventually rented homes along the beach, before hearing from one of Jack’s kite-surfing mates about an opportunity to buy beachfront.

Rosen and Gillespie lived in the existing dwelling – “a little house with blue windows” – for a few months before they embarked on building a home for themselves and their German shepherd, Magic. With their strong links to Takapuna, it was crucial the new home felt connected to the site and sea.