Ostend Road

Jeremy Hansen talks of the villa's consistent habit of facing the world with both its richest work and the welcoming verandah, which gives a human scale and a sense of generous ambience for all.

With this family home we turned the villa inside out, back to front, kept the scrim, the bay window and the meat box. Along came a brewery, a worm farm and a chicken run.

This villa has three woods: kauri, cedar and pine, and a skin of corrugated iron.

Built on a tight budget and a family growing, it captures everything Jeremy references with human scale, a leaning south wall (for leaning on) and ambience for all children young and old to engage with the love of the land.

It’s a little bit of England in the South pacifi