HOMIE - COMING SOON

‘Homie’ is a venture initiated by William Samuels Architects in response to upcoming legislation changes aimed at reducing the regulation around building secondary dwellings in New Zealand. Faced with the prospect of poor-quality small homes being built throughout the country because of the law change, we instead looked at how we can proactively respond to the legislation by designing a series of small homes that can be accessed by anyone for a small licence fee.

A key inspiration for this was Robin Boyd’s Small Home Service (established in 1947) that made modern architectural designs available to purchase at low cost. In a similar vein, Homie offers a collection of predesigned, thoughtfully considered and fully documented house plans that empower homeowners to add crafted, functional living spaces with ease and affordability.

The designs are intentionally simple, easy to build and without adornment. The innovation lies less within the design, but rather in the approach to making architectural houses available to a much larger audience at a fraction of the cost of traditional architectural services.

At this stage there are three iterations of the basic design (two-bedroom, one-bedroom and studio), however we intend to expand the offering to include a wide range of designs to suit different sites, climatic requirements and stylistic preferences.

In New Zealand a very small percentage of new homes are designed by architects, and typically this is available only to a wealthy minority. We believe that good design should be accessible by everyone, and Homie is our attempt to address that.