Builder's labour of love wins top design accolade

The Cathcart house was praised for its experimental architecture and sense of warmth.

A 1960s-style Glendowie house which took eight years to build scooped one of four supreme national architecture awards at the weekend.

In 1998, Stewart Cathcart of S & M Cathcart Builders and his wife, Margaret, began working weekends and spare evenings to put up the black Clouston St house clad in rusticated cedar weatherboards with copper and brass fittings.

While Cathcart worked on 10 other houses and renovation jobs, he grabbed any extra time he had to build his own place overlooking the Tamaki Estuary.

People stared and neighbours called in to ask about the unusual structure with its high steel beams, which Cathcart joked looked like a service station. The couple poured concrete pads, put up the beams, painted, laid floor joists and, for a year managed without a kitchen.

All the hard work and inconvenience has now paid off.

"It's a work of art because of the architect's talent - there's absolutely no deviations off the drawings," Cathcart said.

In the late 1990s, five children were living at the Cathcart home so architect Jack Manning, of Manning & Associates, designed a two-level, five-bedroom house. "By the time we finished, the kids had all left home," Cathcart said.

Manning said the house challenged present design trends that favoured minimalist, flat-roofed homes, fitted with aluminium joinery and with all walls opening up.

"This house is closed in and gives you a feeling of belonging," Manning said.

He described Cathcart as an absolute craftsman and praised the builder for following his design.

The ceilings are clad in rough, bandsawn ply panels. Highly polished floors have been made from Northland swamp kauri, which Cathcart said was carbon-dated as being around 46,000 years old.

These wood surfaces are offset by stark white plasterboard walls. Joinery is coated in high-gloss lacquer primary colours including Spanish red and lightning yellow.

Cathcart used an on-site workshop to build all the joinery and to spraypaint cabinets. He worked from 268 pages of architectural details but has no idea how much the house cost to build.

"I'd hate to think," he said.

Architects were in wonder of the house, some saying they would never even get close to its perfection and Manning's skill.

The New Zealand Institute of Architects, which runs the awards, said the house had great warmth and a sense of familiarity but it also delighted in challenging the conventional - with the architecture being experimental and idiosyncratic.

The alliance between the architect and builder had to be praised, although it was more common for the architect than the builder to be the client.

Patrick Clifford, national convener of the institute's judges, said supreme awards were given for vision, style and technical excellence. Each project was marked as being of the highest calibre.

Auckland architect Gordon Moller, of Craig Craig Moller, was awarded a medal for his consistent and outstanding contribution to the sector.


SUPREME AWARDS

* Cathcart house, Glendowie, by Jack Manning.

* AUT Business School, Auckland, by Jasmax.

* Beach retreat near Paihia by Pete Bossley Architects.

* Oriental Bay project, Wellington, by Architecture Workshop, Isthmus Group and Tonkin and Taylor.

ENDURING AWARDS

* Parnell Baths, Auckland, by Tibor Donner.

* Hannah Playhouse, Wellington, by James Beard & Co.

Gold medal award:

* Auckland architect Gordon Moller who designed the Sky Tower.