This home was originally constructed in 2003 as two adjoining apartments in a medium density town planning classification. Once both were purchased, they changed to use as a single residence utilising the front unit living spaces as an architect’s office.

There are four bedrooms, each with ensuites to the first floor. The structure is a large simple rectangular block with a 45 degree roof pitch to one side. The narrow end elevations have incorporated cedar weatherboards, surrounded by the plastered finish.

The home has two main entry doors, adjacent to each other, separated by a galvanised downpipe. The doors are solid core mounted in anodised aluminium frames. The adjoining wall containing the doors is approximately 19 metres long by about 3.4 metres high. There are no other openings, excepting the doors, in the total wall length. The adjacent wall is constructed with a plaster finish on a polystyrene base.

The home is approached along the length of the building, adjacent to a close side boundary, from the street. The doors are located under a joint shelter canopy extending about a metre from the wall face. This provides a visual access focus upon entering the property.

At least 12 Resene testpots were sampled to obtain the correct colour for the exterior plasterwork. The preference was to paint the complete exterior, excluding the Cedar, with a black. The final choice was determined by the apparent softness of the Resene X-200 CoolColour tinted to Resene Black Russian when compared to other ‘blacks’ sampled.

The colour choices for the doors, which were originally grey, were selected by looking at each colour and how it contrasted against other choices. Resene Enamacryl tinted to Resene Clementine Orange and Resene Limerick proved to be a good pairing of colours, one on each door.

Architectural specifier: Bruce Banbury, Banbury Architects
Project: Resene Total Colour Awards 2014

› Download a PDF of this article