Designed and built by family members, this house in Leigh is steeped in heritage and ancestry.

On a bend in the road in a historic area of Remuera, Auckland, this large site had been mostly unused for decades. An original 1930s bungalow had a certain charm, but its layout and orientation didn’t lend itself to contemporary family life — or make the most of the site.

The nickname “swamp house” expresses the home’s proximity to the marshy paddocks resting below it on the Crown Range between Queenstown and Wanaka but it might give you the wrong idea about the climate on the high, elevated plateau.  For Kerr Ritchie’s Bronwen Kerr and

Bach living is a stripped-back approach to life: family time spent eating, playing board games and puzzles in the evening, and during the day getting outside and enjoying what the natural environment has to offer – water sports, backyard cricket and mountain biking.

It’s a familiar story: when youngsters enter the picture, the excitement of the big-city dream tends to pale. Childhood memories of beaches, open space and a more relaxed pace suddenly become irresistible. Expat Luisa Andrew and her Scottish husband Stephen Dewar were living with three

Claude Megson’s unique contribution to New Zealand architecture had almost disappeared from view when this house, his masterpiece, was saved from demolition. These days, its many, many doors are thrown open each year to students doing a unit on Megson at the architecture school in