Showhomes > Passion for the 1920's bungalow

Passion for the 1920's bungalow

Guy and Jo Gillespie have long had a passion for early New Zealand architecture, particularly 1920s bungalows.

“We're drawn to the details,” explains Guy. “Even when we're on holiday we can't resist walking the streets snapping shots of bungalows, getting ideas, observing how early architects added their particular signature to the bungalow.”

For Guy, that interest grew into a successful business renovating and restoring some of Christchurch's fine examples of early 20th century bungalows. Over the last six or seven years Guy has ripped apart and reconstructed a wide variety of bungalows, all the while observing and better understanding the way they were constructed and detailed.

Now, as well as renovating old bungalows, Guy's new company, Character Homes Ltd, specialises in building brand new authentically detailed bungalows and villas using today's contemporary low maintenance materials such as Linea® Weatherboards.

Completed in late 2002, the Gillespie's own family home is a three bedroom Californian-style bungalow on the rural outskirts of Christchurch, at Bishopdale, which was designed by Guy's brother-in-law, Harvey Duncan.

“We wanted to borrow the 1920s bungalow theme and apply it in a contemporary way,” says Guy. “The original New Zealand bungalows were quite organic in the way they evolved out of a mixture of Californian and English Arts and Crafts styles. They were not as formulaic or prescribed as the Villas that preceded them.

Homes were designed to meet the family's specific requirements and budgets and that's exactly what we've done here. Although this is partly about our passion for bungalows, the house has been designed very much around the particular needs of our family.”

At the core of the home is a large sunny open-plan kitchen/dining/living area, which opens out onto a concrete-paved courtyard. While this style of open-plan living and indoor-outdoor flow seems very contemporary, it is also in keeping with the original bungalow ethos.

Harvey Duncan explains, “Rooms opened off rooms, often using sliding doors to open up or shut down spaces. The houses tended to be oriented more to the sun than to the street, and there was more of a flow between the indoors and the outdoors which reflected the emerging New Zealand lifestyle and a rejection of Victorian stuffiness and ornateness.”

The Gillespie home manages to take many of these features and incorporate them with more contemporary features suited to today's family lifestyles. Big bay windows in the dining and lounge area let in plenty of sunlight, with the bay window in the living area incorporating a seating area that catches the afternoon sun.

A pair of timber and glass doors connects the main living area with a more formal wood-panelled lounge complete with a traditional tiled fireplace. The kitchen, with it's panelled doors and coal-range style canopy over the stove, echos the 1920s ambiance, without making the modern kitchen appliances seem out of place.

Great use has been made inside and outside the home of contemporary building materials which provide a low-maintenance, and often lower-cost alternative to traditional materials. The house is clad in James Hardie Linea Weatherboards – a perfect example of how one of today's most technologically-advanced building products has been used to recreate a traditional look. Linea weatherboard, with it's deep shadow lines is indistinguishable from the look of traditional timber weatherboards, but there's a big difference where maintenance is concerned.

“In the past we were stuck with using high maintenance materials to re-create an authentic look,” says Guy. “But now Linea gives us the perfect solution. It looks fantastic because it takes the darker colours and the profile is identical to traditional weatherboards. I would always encourage people to go for it, because of the low maintenance requirement and the fact that it just looks so good.”

The sloping soffits over the entrance way lined with HardieGroove™Lining work well with the mosaic tiles, leadlight windows, and exposed rafters to replicate a typical 1920's entrance way, again using low-maintenance materials

Read more details about how the Gillespeis created their 1920's bungalow style throughout their home and how contemporary building materials have been used to make it not only economical, but low maintenance: