Walker Box fits living, leisure, and a hair studio into a single garage footprint.
Its spirit comes from two champions of joyful building: Roger Walker and the ‘Box’ houses of Melling Morse
Why buy a section when you can take over a friend's garage ?
Win-win! Helping them pay down their mortgage in exchange for a pile of bricks and 100m2 of south-facing dirt.
Blitz the site!
A friendly neighbour (and future client) saves a lone cabbage tree from the bulldozers. A tower of white concrete block cranes up high to grab sun and views down the valley. Think of it as a 6x4 rectangle extruded to 8 meters — replacing the hillside garage that Wellington knows too well ... it’s a design that could be replicated across the city.
Up top: a compact living space with a burgundy-walled skylight. A red spiral stair bringing dappled light to the lower levels. One floor down, a sleeping corner with indigo curtain and bathroom pod. And lastly at street level, the ‘garage-not-garage’, a bi-product of the District Plan of the day, provides a home hair-salon with guest, yoga and piano nook.
When we lift the lid and begin to play, the tones from the 1918 Blüthner rise up the spiral stair.
Three + years of building later and Walker Box is done. A quirky Box of a house with intimacy and generosity … and a bit of fun! It’s alive and well thanks to the work and warmth of many many people. The bonus prize? Neighbourly banter with friends every weekend — the perfect sort of community for introverts.