Our second Open Home event for 2025 is pretty special, featuring two houses by the same architects, just a kilometre apart in the Tāmaki suburb of Ōwairaka Mount Albert – but exploring radically different approaches to renovation.

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Pac Studio often works in the inner-west of Tāmaki Makaurau, designing renovations to old wooden houses through the city’s leafy 20th-century suburbs. While all their projects have a sense of personality – lots of colour, lots of joy – there’s no one way of doing things, and they work across a wide variety of budgets, as evidenced by the two houses on this tour.

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First up, there’s Sunny Sky, a project the studio completed for director Sarosh Mulla’s sister-in-law and her family. Working with a simple 1940s plaster-clad box, Mulla’s design completely reorganised the house for modern living without expanding the footprint – a move that made the project cost-effective but also allowed for some special touches. A joyful colour palette completes the picture. (You can read more in our feature here).

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Not far away, Lava Flow – and a very different approach. Working with a transitional villa on a flat site, Pac added a new volume, subtly different but sensitive to the original house, to create new living areas and a single garage. The budget’s bigger, and so is the footprint – but it shares a joy in colour with Sunny Sky.

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Both show a commitment to honouring old houses and saving as much of the original elements as possible, while reworking the city’s 20th-century housing stock for modern life – and adding wonderful layers of colour. We look forward to seeing you there.

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Open Home Mount Albert

Sunny Sky and Lava Flow by Pac Studio

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Where:

Ōwairaka Mount Albert, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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When:

Saturday 10 May, 2025; sessions from 9.30am

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