The cold-open scene-setter in this week’s Grand Designs NZ has host Tom Webster sitting among the musicians of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Yes, architecture and classical music in primetime, albeit a home-building reality show. Who said commercial broadcasting and high-culture can’t co-exist?
Well TVNZ did quite a few decades
ago. Whole other story.
And Webster is, of course, just there to conduct (ha ha) this week’s overture (ho ho) about a build, not in the Garden City but a place in Martinborough wine country.
It’s quite the introduction (which we gently tease him about in our post-show interview, down below) in which he says: “The main builder is the conductor. The carpenters are the percussion setting the rhythm with hammer and nail. The electricians are the strings, weaving current through the walls like melodies …”
He finishes with one of those non-committal lines – “just like architecture, music is subjective. This composition might not be to everybody’s tastes, but perhaps you might just find it magical” – suggesting the upcoming grand design isn’t likely to be one of the show’s greatest hits.
As it turns out, it’s not. It’s a $3.3 million home (above the hoped-for $2.5 million budget) including barn, glamping area and the beginnings of a vineyard, that from my subjective eye isn’t going to win any architecture prizes. That’s even with its white Oamaru stone and black yakisugi timber exterior and its angles suggesting it’s a throwback to another era of NZ architecture (more below).
But there are features, a few which Webster describes succinctly as “that’s one of one”. Like the sunken lounge with the waiting room surround-seating and the fireplace right where the view should be. Or the bathroom with the wallpaper and mirrors made to look a barrel room in a French vineyard. Or the vast Moroccan-style couch that seems to take up most of the lounge in an area upstairs that might make you wonder: Why is there an upstairs?
Owners Tim and Sally Roach have worked hard in IT and property investment since immigrating from the UK a couple of decades ago and they have a dream and their own ideas on interior decoration. They’ve lived in Martinborough for a while and – given they have to sell off a series of local rental properties to fund the new spread and its rising costs – they seem to have also owned much of it.
Grand Designs NZ, episode six 2026: Interiors of the Martinborough home. Supplied.
Good chap that he is, Tim is the coach of the local women’s football team, which provides a distraction as the build does the stop-start thing over a year or two of construction, due to a combination of skyrocketing building costs and a slow Wairarapa real estate market.
Along the way Webster ponders if the design will work: “Will they end up with a fine wine, or will it end up. vinegar?” But as is the Grand Designs tradition, he comes around in the end.
It’s amusing when the couple, living in the homestead’s barn, having promised relations from England a place to stay when they come out for their son’s wedding, have to put up the visitors in a place that lacks some amenities. Like a front door.
It’s all part of the fun when the in-laws find themselves starring in the colonial outpost of Britain’s greatest home-building franchise. But this show does include a fine lesson on Oamaru stone, the local yakisugi timber trade and many shots that suggest the South Wairarapa is a very nice place to put down roots, and a vine or two.
Grand Designs NZ episode six 2026: Exterior images of the Martinborough house. Supplied
What Tom Webster, still an architect when he’s not working on the show, has to say about the project
So, you start the show comparing the building of a house with an orchestra and that builders are the percussionists. You know that in many symphonic works, percussionists don’t turn up for a couple of hundred bars? Or they are there at the beginning then they bugger off until the end… so not like builders at all really. Others to consider…
Harpists as the interior decorators (picky).
Brass section is the plumbers (lots of pipes, sometimes containing fluids) …
The conductor as the project manager (points to plans with a stick, hopes people notice, waves stick about).
Got any others that didn’t make the cut?
That opening piece involved a lot of to and fro between the director, editors, and me. There were a few different points of view on how to characterise construction teams in musical terms. We settled in a place that seemed to have some logic. Filming in close proximity to the CSO was a visceral sonic experience, made even more memorable as it also involved a late-night visit to [architects] Warren and Mahoney’s Christchurch Town Hall. Senses fully engaged! I’d love to find a reason to do another music-themed setup. There’s a deep connection between architecture and music, articulated in the famous Goethe quote, “Architecture is frozen music”.
Cool. Anyway, from a distance, the black and stark white of the Oamaru stone house and the angles reminded me of Ian Athfield designs, albeit slightly less geometric and sitting in a Wairarapa vineyard rather than hanging off a hill in Wellington. What did you think of the place architecturally and where it sits in terms of contemporary design and its influences?
Of course, I was intrigued by the high-contrast material choices as seen in the episode but rarely seen in contemporary architecture. Designgroup Stapleton Elliot’s original concept renders had a softer aesthetic, more like their Takahē house. In fact, you can see several architectural similarities with that house including a long span roof, masonry elements extending into the landscape (an idea worked more heavily at the Martinborough house), and outdoor courtyard spaces bounded on three or four sides. Those three moves seemed to me like logical architectural responses to working with the flat open site.
Yakisugi seems very fashionable right now. Is it here to stay in high end house design in NZ?
We’ve been flirting with the use of charred timber in New Zealand for some time. Cheshire Architects’ Eyrie, is still a big (small) favourite of mine. A Chris Moller-era GDNZ episode followed Shane and Tina Nicholl’s Yakisugi clad house, a high-budget, high-end house, which is now aging gracefully. It may be fashionable and increasingly available right now, but yakisugi as a technique has demonstrable staying power. It makes for a great sustainable product, particularly when using a modified softwood base. As an architect I also really like the range of appearance options, which can be varied through base timber choice, char level, brush finish, and oil type.
There was a phrase you used a couple of times in the episode “that’s one of one” which, especially when you viewed the bathroom with the wine cellar wallpaper, sounded a bit diplomatic.
It’s always useful to have a non-committal phrase or two up your sleeve. In this case I should have committed more, I actually really enjoy subversive or humorous design elements. Architecture can be pretty strait-laced at times; there’s a danger of refining out the quirk or the fun. With houses, you’re dealing with personalities, and if this results in wine cellar wallpaper, I say all power to those personal touches. Part of my childhood was spent in a modest, but architectural, 1970s terrace house; the room that made the biggest impression on me was the tiny downstairs WC, completely lined in “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” themed wallpaper for reasons unexplained.
This is the second in the series about a migrant English couple getting towards retirement age who are building their dream home. Are stories like this useful when it comes to sending the NZ show into different territories and particularly the UK?
Interesting thought. GDNZ does export to several English-speaking countries but an awareness of that isn’t currently part of our project selection process. Don’t let those accents fool you though, these folks are also Kiwis and deeply committed to being here. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we come across the odd plummy accent or two (including my own) given that almost 30% of our population is imported, the UK being the largest contributor.
The laundry in the which owners somehow managed to get whiteware which matched their dog. SuppliedSaveShare this article
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