AD ARCHITECTURE & CO
As any homeowner will tell you, buildings are so much more than bricks and mortar. Your home is a reflection of your personality and somewhere where you can comfortable and secure. Houses are a central part of our lifestyle – a place where we raise our children; measuring their growth on a door frame, building a tree house and a sandpit in the backyard. They’re the places we enjoy for peace and quiet as well as entertaining, and as we get older, tending to the vegetable garden and babysitting the visiting grandchildren.
Buildings such as shops, community centers and libraries are equally loved. Each has a personality, charm and a hive of good memories.
Designing quality buildings around the greater Wellington area and beyond is AD Architecture, a company set up by Peter Davis and Jon Ambler three and a half years ago. The new practice combined the resources of the two partners well established existing businesses. Based in the Kapiti Coast, it now has seven staff.
“Combining them was a thought we’d both had at the same time. It just made sense for the local area – there were no medium sized practices here but there was lots of potential with demand for quality residential design and larger scale commercial and community projects coming up in the next 10 - 15 years. We knew if we established our capability then we would be well positioned to handle some of these exciting projects.”
AD Architecture is looking to the future in other ways. Peter and Jon are passionate about appropriate sustainable and eco design, as Peter explains.
“It makes sense really. Locally, Nationally and Globally - we can’t keep going as we have been. New Zealanders have been building houses that are unnecessarily large, wasteful and unsustainable. The sooner we can produce buildings of a realistic scale that incorporate well-chosen materials and technology the better off we will be.
“Building costs are going up, as are the costs to the environment.”
Both Peter and Jon have recently qualified as Homestar practitioners. The Homestar scheme was introduced 18 months ago as a residential rating tool to assess the performance of homes in a totally holistic way
Homestar assessors, such as Peter and Jon, can visit clients who want their homes renovated or built and tell them how they can go about making them more sustainable. Houses can reach ratings between 1 and 10.
“From a new property’s point of view you can design to suit the rating you’re trying to achieve. I believe this will soon develop momentum in public’s eye.”
AD Architecture also works closely with Heart of Green, a company started by Denise Davis, Peter’s wife. Denise independently assesses homes and determines a number of measures to provide for a healthier home and way of life, along with options to make it more sustainable and cheaper to heat..
“Sustainable homes will develop further in the near future, Jon predicts.
“There’s a lot of scope, and we are already seeing signs that the public are embracing the principles of more sustaibale design. Ten years ago people would have looked at you funny for wanting to use green design – now it’s taken much more seriously.
“The Eco design industry is starting to show how well designed, energy efficient homes save money in the long term. A new approach to whole life costing needs a buy-in from the public as the payback period won’t be immediate – typically higher capital costs will have a payback period of around seven years, and thereafter will be significantly cheaper to run”
AD Architecture’s future goals are to stay local.
“We’d like to really become an integral part of the local region, in terms of being the first place that people come to for a design. Whether it’s big business or smaller residential customers, we value each and every client and commssion.”
AD Architecture works closely with other local companies to build the structures it designs. Creating these buildings lies in the hands of B&K Developers, North Face Construction and Hanna Construction.
B&K
Recently B & K Developers has constructed a number of homes for clients in the new Rosetta Cove subdivision, Raumati. These are high end homes noted for their diverse architecture, designed by Peter Davis of AD Architecture.
B & K Developers works with each of its clients from the design stage in consultation with AD through to completion. Each home is tailored to the wish list and budget of each family.
B & K Developers is involved in the process from the start – from looking at the site and location to fully discussing what the clients’ wants and needs for their home are. There are no sets of plans to choose from, each house is individually designed for the client, which Peter Davis says “is much easier than fiddling around with standard plans which usually don't work anyway.”
Peter says he has had a long and successful working relationship with B&K, since the company first began.
“Working as team in a design and build approach has allowed us to provide a very efficient, cost competitive service with exceptional results,”
“The B& K commitment to ensuring that the client is completely satisfied has led to many very happy home owners.”
North Face Construction
AD Architecture designed Chris and Leonie Beggs’ showhome.
“I’ve known Jon and Peter a long time, I like their work,” Chris Beggs says.
“We had our own ideas and other people’s ideas and AD Architecture were the ones that could pull that together and get it all to work.
“ I really enjoy working with ADA because they are approachable, relaxed but efficient – our plans didn’t have one query going through council. I really like their self-explanatory plans, I enjoy building off them.”
Jon Ambler says the ADA team greatly enjoyed designing North Face’s showhome a couple of years ago, as well as the other projects AD and North Face have collaborated on in the past.
“Chris is a really good builder; he’s got an eye for detail and makes excellent suggestions. It’s good to have a builder on board who is really driven – he always has the best interests of a project at heart.”
Jon is pleased with how the house is looking.
“ It looks modern, stylish and contemporary – I think we and Chris have shown that a sustainable house doesn’t mean a boring or weird house which some people might think.
“It’s really sustainable and their goal is to take it off the grid, which is a great achievement for a suburban house.”
Hanna Construction
One of the companies Hanna has a strong partnership with is AD Architecture.
“In the 30 odd years I’ve been in business I’d say we’d find them the one of the best architectural companies we’ve ever been involved with. They’re great people, no nonsense and professional with great vision. We find our clients speak highly of them. Why would you want to skimp on the initial design process when you are dealing with your main asset?” Hanna says.
“We’re on the end of the process with the client – and when there’s good communication between ADA and the customer and the project is all consented and ready to go, then our job is easy.
A recent job ADA and Hanna worked on together was adding a triple car garage with an upstairs studio and a link above to the main house in Roseneath.
“The team at ADA had a lot of foresight for this difficult job. The access was tricky, it was an extremely difficult site geographically,” Hanna says.
This extension will be entered in next year’s Master Builders Awards. The house, built seven years ago by Hanna Construction, won a silver medal back then. And still looks as good as it did then with the current owners adding their personal touches.
ADA and Hanna have also worked on a number of home refurbishments lately, including completely modernising some historic houses.
“ADA has a great feel for historic redesigns and new homes alike,” Hanna says.
Peter Davis from AD Architecture has worked with Hanna for more than ten years, when he had his own practice and now as part of the ADA team.
“Due to the thoroughly professional manner in which John approaches projects, he has won several tenders and is often selected by clients ahead of other firms for negotiated tender or design and build projects,” he says.
“John has the capability to fully understand the client’s vision and also provide valuable insights during the construction phase to always achieve a great result. The quality of work is always superb from both the building team and their loyal sub contactors.”
Posted by on 22nd September, 2011 | Comments | Trackbacks
Tags: AD Architecture Limited, Energy Efficient Homes, Homestar, North Face Construction, Hanna Construction, B&K
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