Amazing $ 500k Renovation of 1940s Mt Roskill State House Wins New Zealand’s Top Architectural Award

Humble beginnings aren’t much starker than this 1940s Mount Roskill state house that has been transformed to win one of New Zealand’s most decorated architecture awards.

The top gong at the 2020 ADNZ Resene Architectural Design Awards has been for a house titled “2 @ 4 in 1” designed by Madushin Amarasekera of Auckland’s Construkt Associates Ltd.

Completed on a modest $ 500,000 budget, the Mt Roskill home surpassed 150 entries from architects across the country.

But despite the contrast between the home’s original look and its spectacular renovation, architect Amarasekera maintained a fundamental aspect of the building’s purpose in the 1940s: community life.

Amarasekera built the house for his family and his wife’s parents to live in, and they are essentially two separate houses.

To realize his vision, more space was added to the original three-bedroom state house through construction.

Now the house is made up of a smaller 72 m2 unit with two bedrooms and a larger unit with three bedrooms.

The justices said the smart moves, like building up on existing foundations, demonstrated an attempt to address the severe housing pressures of our time.

“Madushin has avoided doing the obvious of placing an annex at the back of an existing house for grandparents,” the judging panel said.

“In these times of Covid ‘stay at home’, we can see how this house would have produced not just a ‘bubble’ but a ‘foam’.

“A series of intertwined spaces, the home allows the two families to come together as a whānau, sharing domestic life alongside work life, while allowing division to give each family their own space and time.

“The overall effect of these carefully intertwined horizontal and vertical spaces is village-like. This is a very sophisticated remodel of the humble state house and we are sure it is the envy of its neighbors.”

This is the third national design award to win “2 @ 4 in 1” from Amarasekera.