When architects Lance and Nicola Herbst emigrated to Aotearoa from their native South Africa in the late 1990s, they found their way to Aotea Great Barrier Island, specifically to a site at Medlands Beach on the island’s east coast. It was here that they developed a sophisticated take on the classic New Zealand bach: a building which has acted as the driver of their practice for 20-something years.

‍

The best of these have been documented in a beautiful new book, Herbst, with an excellent introduction by John Walsh, and featuring a typically spare 12 projects. There are also introductions and reflections written by the Herbsts themselves. “What the Herbsts brought to a building type accorded rote recognition was a fresh gaze,” writes Walsh. “In professional and personal terms, they found what they’d been looking for.”

‍

The book includes early projects: their own bach (1999-present), which started as a water tower and slowly grew, along with Oruawharo Bay Bach (2008) and Kaitoke Bach (2011) – small structures, which delighted in the casual rituals of bach life. But it also charts a steady procession through a series of increasingly sophisticated houses: you’d hesitate to call Under Pōhutukawa, a house at Piha that seemed to mimic the canopy above it, a bach, nor Dune House, which won best interior in our Here Awards 2022, nor the Omata Beach House in Northland, which completes the book and features extensive use of stone rather than timber. What ties them together, as Walsh notes, is clarity.

‍

“Across a wide range of budgets, the baches have a richness, thanks to the exposition of their timber composition, and a depth, derived from the layered arrangement of decks, screens and shutters. The point, too, about Herbst baches is that for all their composure, they exist in a relationship that demands deference. Nature makes the rules in the places where the Herbsts design their baches."

‍

As Nicola Herbst puts it: “We came from a very easy climate to a more difficult one… But we still really wanted to spend our time outdoors.” Continues Lance: “We learned very quickly that you don’t hide from the sun, you chase it. Then there’s the frequent rain and constant wind.”

‍

There’s an ease in a Herbst bach, and it comes from that response to climate and place. They are often manual, with screens and fireplaces that require operating. As a result, they are attuned to ritual and time, and the value we place on that when we’re not at home. They have what the Herbsts call a “porous connection to nature”, with spaces that are neither inside nor out – most obviously with the adaptation of the lanai, a Hawaiian verandah.

‍

The budgets have got bigger, and the houses have more sophisticated. “But aspects of the Herbsts’ architectural brief have not lapsed,” writes Walsh. “A house in a beautiful place should properly acknowledge its site; refuge should involve some renunciation of the regimes of normal life; habitation should bring joy. Each holiday house the Herbsts design is a candle lit on the altar of architecture to the spirit of the bach.”