Architect sells $4m+ dream home designed to prove density works

Nikki Launder moved a bungalow to make room for a house. Not metaphorically—she actually relocated the small weatherboard cottage that sat on her Westmere property, sliding it closer to the street to carve out space for something new. That something was the Black House, a five-bedroom modern structure she designed for her family five years ago, and it has just gone on the market with a price tag exceeding $4.2 million.

Launder founded her architecture practice, dn², fourteen years ago alongside her father Dave, who cut his teeth in the 1970s working with figures like Roger Walker, Ian Athfield, and Gordon Moller. She has spent her career renovating houses since graduating from architecture school, but the Edgars Road project was different. It was a manifesto. At a time when many residents in character suburbs like Westmere were skeptical or openly hostile to Auckland's new density rules, Launder and her husband decided to build a case for how well those rules could actually work. They would prove it by living in the proof.

When Launder began drawing up plans in 2021, Auckland Council was still working out the boundaries of what the Unitary Plan would permit. The process of getting resource consent was, by her own account, tricky. "There's always compromises with the council," she said. She suspects it would be simpler now—the council has become more encouraging of density—but at the time, navigating the bureaucracy required patience and negotiation. Once the bungalow, which she renamed Little Blue, was repositioned and renovated, she turned to designing the new house on the remaining 412 square meters of land.

The result is 286 square meters of deliberately moody architecture. Launder chose stained cedar, walnut joinery, black stained and raw concrete, reeded glass on the stair handrail, and Negresco black stone on the kitchen island. The palette is dark and textural, which creates an apparent contradiction: the house is, she notes, actually very sunny. She did not want bright light oak and white. She wanted something that felt rich and layered. Her husband and three teenagers were her clients, and she delivered a home with five bedrooms, a swimming pool, living rooms at ground level, courtyards, and gardens positioned to flood the interior with natural light. The craftsmanship throughout—hand-blown light fittings from Luke Jacomb Studio, vintage lights sourced from a Czechoslovakian hotel, granite pavers, solar panels, a rainwater retention tank—speaks to the kind of obsessive attention that only an architect living in her own design can sustain.

She is particularly proud of the semi-sunken lounge, surrounded by windows on three sides and overlooking the pool, and of fitting two courtyards onto a site that could easily have felt cramped. "There are all these details that are so personal," she said. "You are going to make me not want to sell the house in a minute." But she is selling it. The family is moving on to do it all again, location still unknown.

This is not a reluctant sale. Launder and her father have always operated on the same philosophy: build houses you want to live in, houses that are personal to you, then live in them for as long as it suits. When it stops suiting, move on to the next project. "I just love a project," she said. "I would do this whole process again." The real estate agent handling the sale, Ollie Wall, describes the property as something special. "Everywhere feels like a cosy space, but it's actually got a lot of separation," he told OneRoof. "We see many people try to achieve that, but Nikki's absolutely nailed it." The property has been on the market for only a few days, but Wall has already fielded an unusually high number of inquiries. He expects it to sell above its $4.225 million rateable value. The market for architect-designed luxury homes in the $4 million to $6 million range, he suggests, is strong. People are lining up for them. The deadline for offers is August 18.