Old stone walls underpin a modern family home in this post-quake transformation by Blair Paterson and Tobin Smith of CoLab Architecture.

With so many post-quake Christchurch building projects presenting a choice between the old or the new, the brief to build a new home on the historic basement walls of a 100-year-old Hurst Seager house was an exciting challenge for CoLab’s Blair Paterson and Tobin Smith.

Nicknamed ‘The House on a Ruin’, the result is a modern, two-storey family home that integrates seamlessly with what remains of the stone basement and retaining walls of the old house, which was destroyed in the February 2011 Canterbury earthquake.

Meticulously repaired, the stonework has become the hero of the whole project. Blair and Tobin are certain that renowned architect Samuel Hurst Seager would approve of the transformation, given he championed New Zealand finding its own style, and using modern technology to improve, not simply imitate.

Orientated to follow the footprint and alignment of its predecessor, the house extends towards the west and perches upon a series of steel stilts as it leaves its stone base, floating lightly over the ground below. From the east, the house is a solid cedar-clad form, confidently anchored to the ground. A timber deck extends the depth of the elevation, curving around an existing flowering cherry tree at the centre of the site.

colabarch.co.nz