STYLE INSIDER

Why an Auckland couple designed their home as a blank canvas.

Briefing an architect should be easy when you know your own mind. And Jeanine and Philipp Oxenius certainly had firm ideas. The couple had renovated houses but never built from scratch and were set on a maintenance-free home: strong yet passive. “We wanted a concrete box,” says Jeanine. Plain and simple. The professionals they consulted demurred: “They wouldn’t give us one, so we designed it ourselves.”

The German-born couple came to New Zealand, individually, about 35 years ago. Philipp is a top-level dressage and eventing coach and, for the past 20 years, Jeanine, a trained dental technician and jeweller, has worked as a full-time artist.

When land in a new Long Bay subdivision came on the market, they were the first to sign up. While the sea views are extensive, “We actually sit within a sea of houses,” says Philipp. The design needed to give privacy from neighbours yet amplify the view. The couple knew that prefabricated tilt-slab concrete would be quick to construct, so they sketched out their thoughts, then had an engineer bring the plan together.

The result is precisely as they envisioned. “The concrete is a huge heat sink and, to the north, we have an overhang that allows plenty of sun in winter but blocks it in summer,” says Jeanine. Double-glazed, thermally broken, argon-filled joinery maintains a constant 18-19°C in all seasons, while good crossventilation keeps the place airy and cool.

Although concrete predominates in the floors and

walls, the “concrete” kitchen bench is actually a painted fibre-cement product as are the internal walls, and the doors are steel-core MDF with a cement-paint finish. “Most people don’t actually realise it’s not concrete,” says Jeanine.

The couple quite enjoy these moments of trickery. Doors in the hallway, are disguised with unusual handles such as a bronze hand or giant screws. A secret pantry hides within a wall of timber birch ply panels. Ditto the walk-in wardrobe in the main bedroom. “It was important to us to include timber in the home to soften it,” says Jeanine. Floating ply ceilings are another foil.

Naturally, the spaces are filled with works by Jeanine and from fellow artists that have a similar off-beat spirit. There’s a skateboard with oversized wheels in the bedroom, an aviator lamp made from scrapyard finds in the living room and a giant ceramic screwdriver on the landing wall.

The house has also opened a new direction for Jeanine’s work. “One day I saw some strangers standing in the middle of my garden, looking at the house.” Those strangers were fellow Germans Heike and Harald Schmitt. They struck up a friendship. “Because they had just arrived, they had no furniture, so we offered them some of our old stuff,” recalls Jeanine. She and Heike prettied up the wooden pieces by painting them different colours, which is how they started Byebyelove, upcycling furniture with painted designs. The bonus is that all this creativity melds aesthetically inside the home that the couple always knew would be so much more than a concrete box.

“I want to be surrounded by beautiful individual objects, not the stuff you can buy by the dozen,” says Jeanine. “That’s important to me, and fortunately, Philipp agrees.”

‘I want to be surrounded by beautiful individual objects’