Design for Monday Morning | Candela Architecture

When people start thinking about a new home or renovation, the conversation often begins with the good bits. A bigger kitchen, better connection outdoors, a generous living space; or somewhere to entertain, more sun, maybe a view.

All important things, but there is another useful way to test a design

How does the house work day to day?

Not the summer afternoon when the doors are open and friends are over. Not the perfectly tidy version that eventually gets photographed.

Monday morning. Someone is making breakfast. Someone else needs the bathroom. Bags are by the door. Washing hasn't quite disappeared from the weekend. Someone is looking for their keys and everyone needs to leave at roughly the same time.

It isn't the glamorous side of architecture, but designing well for those ordinary moments can make an enormous difference to how a home feels to live in.

Start with what isn't working

For renovations in particular, There is a lot of value in understanding what doesn’t quite work rather than immediately deciding on the solution.

Maybe the kitchen isn't actually too small, maybe it is but it’s also in the wrong place.

Perhaps the living room gets good sun but has no useful connection to the garden. Everyone enters through the laundry because the front door is nowhere near where the cars are. There might be plenty of floor area, but somehow nowhere sensible to put shoes, school bags or the vacuum cleaner.

The first response doesn't always need to be more space.

Sometimes it is. Other times, moving a kitchen, changing the circulation or opening one part of the house to the sun and garden can make the existing floor area work considerably harder.

That is particularly useful when renovating existing homes around Invercargill, Southland and Central Otago, where an extra 20 square metres of building isn't necessarily the best place to spend the budget.

Bigger isn't automatically better

The same applies to new homes.

During the design process, floor area has a habit of creeping up. A little more space around the dining table. A larger ensuite. A wider hallway. Another living area. A bigger garage.

None of those decisions seems particularly significant on its own. Together, they can add a surprising amount of floor area, and cost, to a home. A well-designed 180m² home can feel considerably more generous than a poorly planned 220m² one.

Often the difference isn't the size of the individual rooms. It is the relationship between them.

Where do you walk?

What do you see when you enter?

Can someone cook while other people gather around the kitchen without getting in each other's way?

Does the living room get useful winter sun?

Can spaces perform more than one role?

Good planning can often achieve more than simply adding floor area.

For new homes in Central Otago, Queenstown and Wānaka, building a little less can also leave more of the budget for the things that really matter, longer lasting materials, good windows, landscaping, thermal performance or simply keeping the overall project affordable.

Design for the ordinary stuff

There is a tendency to imagine a new home at its best.

The kitchen bench is clear. The sun is out. The sliding doors are open. Someone has somehow removed every appliance from the kitchen before taking the photograph.

Real houses aren't quite like that. They have groceries arriving from the car, wet jackets, muddy shoes, laptops on the dining table and washing waiting to be folded. A good home should have somewhere for that life to happen without it constantly getting in the way.

Where do you actually enter the house?

Where do shoes and coats go?

How far do you carry groceries?

Can someone leave early without waking the rest of the house?

Is there somewhere genuinely quiet enough to work?

Can children be doing homework near the kitchen without taking over the kitchen?

Does the outdoor living area work with the prevailing wind, or does it simply look good on the plan?

These are fairly ordinary questions. Collectively, they have a huge influence on whether a house feels easy to live in.

Let the site do some of the work

The site is part of this too.

Across Central Otago, homes have to respond to strong sun, cold winters, wind, large temperature swings and often very open landscapes. Around Queenstown and Wānaka, steep sites, neighbouring properties, views and planning controls can add another layer to the puzzle.

Those things don't necessarily need to be treated as problems.

A change in level might help separate living spaces without adding walls. An awkward corner of a site might become a sheltered courtyard. A carefully positioned window can capture a view without exposing an entire room to neighbours.

Sometimes the best response to a difficult site isn't to fight it; It is to let the constraints help shape the house.

Renovate, extend or start again?

For some homeowners, the bigger question is whether the existing house is worth working with at all.

There isn't a universal answer. A renovation or extension can make sense where the existing house has good bones, occupies the site well or already contains a significant amount of useful building fabric. In other cases, working around an unsuitable layout can create so many compromises that starting again deserves consideration.

This is where some early feasibility or concept design work can be useful.

Before deciding how big the project should be, work out what is worth keeping, what genuinely needs to change and where spending money will have the greatest effect.

The goal doesn't need to be the biggest possible project, it needs to be the right project.

You don't need to arrive with the answer

A good architectural brief doesn't need to begin with a list of rooms and a finished idea of what the house should look like.

Bring the images you've saved. Talk about materials you like and houses you've seen.

But also talk about what annoys you.

The kitchen everyone gets stuck in. The room nobody uses. The cold corner of the house. The place where shoes accumulate. The outdoor area that is always too windy. The fact that everyone walks through the wrong door.

Those things can be just as useful as the inspiration images.

Because ultimately, a home isn't experienced as a floor plan or a photograph.

It is experienced in hundreds of small moments, most of which are fairly ordinary.

At Candela Architecture, we work across Southland and Central Otago, including Invercargill, Alexandra, Cromwell, Queenstown and Wānaka, on new homes, renovations, extensions and infill housing.

Whether starting with an empty site or trying to make an existing home work better, the aim is much the same:

Design for the good days, certainly; but  make sure it works around your life.