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A Family House and Garden

Architect: Gordon F. Wilson

1	Playroom
2	Boys' Bedrooms
3	Girls' Bedrooms
4	Parent's Bedroom
5	Kitchen
6	Meals
7	Dining
8	Living room
9	Front porch
10	Bathroom
11	Shower
12	W.C.
13	Laundry
14	Drying yard
15	Kitchen yard
16	Lawn
17	Patio
18	Garage
19	Shed
20	Drive

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Apart From Its Size — which is large for these days — this is an unusual and remarkable house. It is composed of strikingly contrasted elements, yet it has the effect of most agreeable harmony; the unexpected becomes the inevitable. Approaching the door up a rather rough Wellington hillside drive overhung with dark pine trees, one would hardly imagine that on the other side of the house lay a secluded garden, warm enough to grow hibiscus, sheltered enough to sit outside, and planted with a blend of formality and freedom that puts a personal seal on the house, inside and out.

The same resolution of contrast is apparent within the house — for example, the brick wall in the living room opposes a wall of silky honey-coloured panelling; and the flax matting borrows quite an air from the fine Persian rug that lies over one end of it. The deliberate contrast of textures and materials — glass, metal, brick, wood and fabric — enhances the natural values of each component.

The final harmony is not, of course, the result of caprice. It is the result of trained sensibility and hard work.

As you will see from the plan, the rooms are grouped: the dining room hall is really part of the living room, the division between them suggested by a clear glass screen; the main bedroom, dressing room and bathroom are separate from the children's bedrooms and playroom; the kitchen, pantry and children's mealroom form another group.

These rooms are bound together by colour. A discerning visitor will notice that the colours derive from the Persian carpet in the living room. Its rosy pinks and reds, soft blues, dull yellow and rich deep brown reappear in varying tones and intensity throughout the house. The panelled wood of the dining room hall is light yellow like the table and chairs and flax matting. Behind glass, on shelves in the panelling is a pale shell-pink tea service. To the left is the living room; the fireplace wall is brick, the rest of the walls that are not glass are panelled in unobstrusively formal squares of the same light-coloured wood. The armchairs and sofa are dark brown, the carpet over the flax matting a clear blue. The curtains are a broken sourish red, deeper than the bricks, which contrasts agreeably with the pink elsewhere. Large windows in the brick wall make the secluded garden (planted, it seems, to contrast with the interior) part of the room.

And so through the rest of the house: there is a good deal of soft pink in the main bedroom; blue rubber material covers the floor of the rest of the rooms. The small bedrooms are identical in size, shape, and furniture — beds, cupboards, desks and drawers are built in; only the colours are different.

It is a large house, kept warm in winter by a slow-burning stove. And the work? Much less, plainly, than in most other large houses.

A dissection of this kind always reduces the object under review to a series of contrived strokes. There is, however, nothing studied about this house, although its effect is quite candidly displayed — it is designed to please and not to impress. It has an air of comfort and good-feeling which all the skill and ‘good taste’ in the world cannot contrive, and which, in the end, defies analysis.

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