As any homeowner will tell you, buildings are so much more than bricks and mortar. Your home is a reflection of your personality and somewhere where you can comfortable and secure. Houses are a central part of our lifestyle – a place where we raise our children; measuring their growth on a door frame, building a tree house and a sandpit in the backyard. They’re the places we enjoy for peace and quiet as well as entertaining, and as we get older, tending to the vegetable garden and babysitting the visiting grandchildren.
Buildings such as shops, community centers and libraries are equally loved. Each has a personality, charm and a hive of good memories.
Designing quality buildings around the greater Wellington area and beyond is AD Architecture, a company set up by Peter Davis and Jon Ambler three and a half years ago. The new practice combined the resources of the two partners well established existing businesses. Based in the Kapiti Coast, it now has seven staff.
“Combining them was a thought we’d both had at the same time. It just made sense for the local area – there were no medium sized practices here but there was lots of potential with demand for quality residential design and larger scale commercial and community projects coming up in the next 10 - 15 years. We knew if we established our capability then we would be well positioned to handle some of these exciting projects.”
AD Architecture is looking to the future in other ways. Peter and Jon are passionate about appropriate sustainable and eco design, as Peter explains.
“It makes sense really. Locally, Nationally and Globally - we can’t keep going as we have been. New Zealanders have been building houses that are unnecessarily large, wasteful and unsustainable. The sooner we can produce buildings of a realistic scale that incorporate well-chosen materials and technology the better off we will be.
“Building costs are going up, as are the costs to the environment.”
Both Peter and Jon have recently qualified as Homestar practitioners. The Homestar scheme was introduced 18 months ago as a residential rating tool to assess the performance of homes in a totally holistic way
Homestar assessors, such as Peter and Jon, can visit clients who want their homes renovated or built and tell them how they can go about making them more sustainable. Houses can reach ratings between 1 and 10.
“From a new property’s point of view you can design to suit the rating you’re trying to achieve. I believe this will soon develop momentum in public’s eye.”
AD Architecture also works closely with Heart of Green, a company started by Denise Davis, Peter’s wife. Denise independently assesses homes and determines a number of measures to provide for a healthier home and way of life, along with options to make it more sustainable and cheaper to heat..
“Sustainable homes will develop further in the near future, Jon predicts.
“There’s a lot of scope, and we are already seeing signs that the public are embracing the principles of more sustainable design. Ten years ago people would have looked at you funny for wanting to use green design – now it’s taken much more seriously.
“The Eco design industry is starting to show how well designed, energy efficient homes save money in the long term. A new approach to whole life costing needs a buy-in from the public as the payback period won’t be immediate – typically higher capital costs will have a payback period of around seven years, and thereafter will be significantly cheaper to run”
AD Architecture’s future goals are to stay local.
“We’d like to really become an integral part of the local region, in terms of being the first place that people come to for a design. Whether it’s big business or smaller residential customers, we value each and every client and commission.”
AD Architecture works closely with other local companies to build the structures it designs. Creating these buildings lies in the hands of B&K Developers, North Face Construction and Hanna Construction.