SPEAKER_00: 0:20

Hello and welcome back to that Home Loan Hub. I am joined by Micah Rickerts from Micah Architecture. If you were thinking about why you should use an architect or building something small, this is the episode for you. So listen up. Hello, Micah.

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

Hi there.

SPEAKER_00: 0:36

How are you this morning?

SPEAKER_01: 0:38

Pretty good. The Southerly came through last night and yeah, so feel like we've been plunged back into winter.

SPEAKER_00: 0:44

Yeah, my son complained. He said it's meant to be summer and what's happening.

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

Yeah. Bit of a question mark around summer, but I think it'll be back in a few days. So that should be good.

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

As long as it's good for Christmas, right?

SPEAKER_01: 0:54

Yep. Yeah, yeah. Winter Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere.

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

That'll be a first. Micah, I'm so glad to have met you a few months ago, maybe a month ago, at one of our joint friends art gallery exhibition. And you striked me because you told me you were an architect and in what you specialized. I was like, wow, this is really, really cool. So let's dive into who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21

Well, yeah, thank you for having me out here. And yeah, it was great to connect with you at that event. So, yes, so my name's Micah. I was born and raised in Wellington. And in fact, Wellington is the only city in New Zealand that I've lived in. But I have lived overseas, and I had quite a strong connection to France when I was growing up, just through various French exchanges and the like. And so, long story short, a one-year OE became four years, and I did my bachelors of architecture over in France. And interspersed into that was a bit of time in Malaysia doing um some architecture study with my uncle, because I'm half Malaysian, so no way, really. Yeah, so half Malaysian, half Kiwi. And so that's a little bit of background to my, I guess, slightly international training. And then towards the end of the bachelor's, I thought I'd better get some New Zealand training as well. So I knew how to be an architect here. So my last two years were spent back in New Zealand, and I've been here ever since.

SPEAKER_00: 2:30

So was it Victoria University?

SPEAKER_01: 2:32

Yeah, so I finished my degree at Victoria. It was a little bit unusual to do the bachelor's overseas and then finish off in Vic. It's quite often the other way around that people do it. So yeah, but so it's it's given me a, I guess, a reasonably uh wide perspective on what architecture is.

SPEAKER_00: 2:48

Wow, that sounds really cool. So did studying abroad help you to get different perspective on the way things are done?

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

Yeah, I think in a subtle way. So I studied in a French school that actually comes out of the Beaux-Arts tradition. So there was a lot of art and drawing as one of the main emphases. And also being in the midst of like the beautiful French architecture, the dense urban cities with medieval centres and just beautiful, beautiful buildings everywhere, cobbled streets and of really sort of animated laneways and the like. Like it, it just living that is quite a special experience. And I think I think it's it's influenced me and my my vision of of small and how how small spaces can work. It I think it's had a subtle influence in my in my training and in my view of architecture.

SPEAKER_00: 3:45

Awesome. And I believe recently you went on your own.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

That's correct.

SPEAKER_00: 3:49

Right. So you've got mica architecture and you specialize in small projects, small forms, projects?

SPEAKER_01: 3:56

Generally smaller, smaller scale projects.

SPEAKER_00: 3:58

Yeah. What are small? Define small.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

I would say up to a say medium-sized house would be that would that would be my upper limit, shall we say? But I'd really focus on infill houses, subdivisions, apartment conversions, maybe renovating a smallish two-bedroom house, but making it really function in a way that would be similar to that of a larger house.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

And what sort of clients are you dealing with? Is it I would assume not probably first-home buyers, or do you come across any first-home buyers that want to do this for the first time?

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

Not first home buyers, but second home buyers. Uh and I've also had retired people who are looking to downsize.

SPEAKER_00: 4:49

I was about to say downsizers, probably.

SPEAKER_01: 4:52

Yes. And also a retired person who had been living in a house for 47 years and didn't want to leave. It's a small house, but she wanted to stay there, renovate it, and make it fit for her later years.

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

Wow. This is really exciting because I guess if you're working with an existing project, existing house, you have to look at it with different eyes, right? How it's built and how can you convert it to something else?

SPEAKER_01: 5:17

Yeah, it's it's not a clean slate, and that's I think where there's a lot of sort of subtle complexity in dealing with an old house. And what's interesting about this retired lady's house is that we're trying to make it fit for when her extended family come to stay for long periods. She has grandchildren and they often come over from London and stay for three months. And so this this small house for one person suddenly needs to accommodate four, five, six people for relatively long periods. So how do you how do you do that without just building a big house?

SPEAKER_00: 5:54

So how do you do that, Micah? What do you what can you do? Give us at least one tip.

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

Yeah, uh, so one great tip is I'm a real fan of flexible spaces. So a space that can have multiple functions. So in this particular house, we've done some we haven't changed the footprint. We've swapped the living room and the kitchen dining room, and this more enclosed living room has multiple functions. It can be closed off, it can work as a TV room, it can work as a work-from-home room, it can has a fold-down bed in it, it has space so that a third bed uh can be pulled out, and so an entire family can actually sleep in this living room with a built-in wardrobe. But then when you fold it all away, it becomes her living room or something similar.

SPEAKER_00: 6:44

So which is really interesting to me because I'm from Tajikistan, you know, and back home when it's apartment living is very popular.

SPEAKER_01: 6:54

Yes, yeah, I could yeah, could well imagine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 6:57

And often our bedrooms were those flexible type of arrangements where I was living, I was sleeping in the living room. I didn't realize at the time it was a living room. I mean, only when I came to New Zealand, I was like, oh, you guys have a separate living room? What? Because back home I would sleep in that room, right? And then I would wake up in the morning, clean it all up, like put away old pillows and blankets and everything. And then that turns into a couch. And then people could come there. There was a table there, there was a little library there, and a little wardrobe for me. So it was pretty much a living room where guests could come, have a tea, coffee, sweets, etc. And then when and I would be really annoyed because if they don't leave until late at night, it means I can't go to sleep. So then the guests would leave, and then I will make my bed and go to sleep. So for me, it was common growing up. And when I first came to New Zealand, I was blown away that people had a separate room that was only for sitting down and drinking teas and coffees, and no one was sleeping there. So it's so cool to hear this that you actually bringing it to New Zealand in a way, and converting those spaces to have that multifunctional use.

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

Yeah, I I like spaces that work hard. I I in the sense that they have multiple use. They they they're connected, but they also can be separate if they need to be. In my own house, I it's a very small house. It's 61 square meters, 62, depending on how you count it. And the whole ground floor is a is basically a flexible space. It is my partner's hair studio. It is a place for bikes, it has a piano in there, it has gym rings in there, it's a yoga space, and it also has a big curtain that when we have guests, we shift a bit of furniture and we draw the curtain and they've got a private space to sleep in. So Wow. So I'm really for this idea of spaces that work hard and enable us to do more with less.

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

Yeah, no, this is fantastic. I'm actually looking around my room now and I'm thinking maybe I need your ideas to come to my house and give me some better tips. This is incredible because 61 square meters is considered small, right? In many people's eyes. And I mean, my first home was 69 square meters, and it was a tiny three-bedroom home in Palms to North, didn't have a garage, didn't have any storage. So I had to create various storages and be creative about it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:23

We've definitely, like in the last, I guess, shall we say, 30, 40, 50 years, we've really gone from like the sort of 80 to 100 square meter house to the 200 to 250 square meter house. We've we've really our our suburbs have expanded, the house sizes have expanded, the lot sizes haven't expanded, and so we're yeah, our built environment is really like getting more and more cluttered with with with bigger houses and and the like, and we have more people. And so I think this idea of you know re-evaluating our needs with regard to size, particularly in a Wellington context where it's so constrained, tight, and hilly. It's yeah, it's very relevant, I think, in these days to be re-evaluating our needs and size.

SPEAKER_00: 10:15

Especially our needs, because you're right, like we have become a little bit more consumerism as well, right? Like we buy bigger, better. I mean, look at the TVs, you know, back in the day the TV was tiny.

SPEAKER_01: 10:27

There were 14 inches or something.

SPEAKER_00: 10:29

Yeah, and now it's like 90 inch, 85 inch, you know, 55 is a standard now, I think, in a lot of houses. So 55-inch TV, it's so how big should be your house in order to fit the 55-inch. So I totally agree with you, and it's kind of ironic because we're sitting like in my giant house, and I'm thinking, actually, I agree with you. I build this big house with my family in mind.

SPEAKER_01: 10:53

And big houses have their place, and there's definitely a place for them. You have four children. Um, yeah, plus my mother, your mother here as well.

SPEAKER_00: 11:01

Like, that's a big house that needs to work hard, but yeah, but at the same time, uh, I was thinking the other day to myself that it would be so much nicer to downsize again because the amount of cleaning and like every weekend I spend hours at a time cleaning.

SPEAKER_01: 11:15

Yeah, there's there comes a time, I imagine, in in life, uh, for a lot of people where they're looking at this place going, Yeah, I think I need I need less now. And if that space can accommodate more through good design when friends come, when family comes, when if you need to work from home, I think that makes a small space work better.

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

Agree. That's awesome. So something exciting happened to you when you designed your house. Can we briefly talk about that?

SPEAKER_01: 11:45

Oh, well, it was a long process. The excitement maybe was the recent award you're referring to.

SPEAKER_00: 11:52

Well, I'm excited for you. You've just won an award.

SPEAKER_01: 11:56

Yeah, it was a it was a it was a boon. So the Institute of Architects runs a yearly awards program, and so I was I was amazed to have it nominated for a national award, and it actually picked up a national award as um amongst amongst others. Yeah, recognizing it as a small house that works hard and is a bit of a I guess blueprint for using leftover front yards that many, many people have. So the house is essentially a single garage in terms of its footprint, and we've extruded it to eight meters tall. So think of it as a garage that's just really tall. A really tall single garage. Basically, that's that's our house in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00: 12:45

How many stories?

SPEAKER_01: 12:46

It's it's three levels.

SPEAKER_00: 12:47

It's three levels, and you've got a stairs going inside. Do you have a lift?

SPEAKER_01: 12:52

No, no lift. It it keeps us fit. Um so we've got a spiral staircase that links the three levels, and the flexible space that I mentioned before with the hair salon and the um and the gym rings and and and the like, so that's actually the garage space, so to speak. So what is kind of curious about the space is that I needed to provide a car park, and I did not want to spend$100,000 digging out the bank to put a car in it. And so this flexible space is theoretically a car park. It could be turned into one if you wanted to, but it's been kitted out in a way that is absolutely not that, with a a raised floor in it, which could be removed, it's got bifold doors, it's got heating, it's got these curtains that I talked about, and then it's all linked to the rest of the house via the spiral stairs.

SPEAKER_00: 13:46

How how hot does the house get? Being so small and up, does it get really hot in the upper levels?

SPEAKER_01: 13:54

Uh that is that is interesting. Definitely in the summer times, the living room is a warm space. All of the heat from all of the floors rises up, and so when you can't go down the staircase, like our bedrooms in the in the middle floor.

SPEAKER_00: 14:07

Oh small.

SPEAKER_01: 14:08

So that's definitely cool. And and then the working space, the flexible space for gym and the like, is on the ground floor, so that's cool where you want it to, and then the living room is right up the top where the sun and the views are, and that warms up, definitely warms up.

SPEAKER_00: 14:23

Okay, so do what sort of uh form of heating or cooling do you have in the house?

SPEAKER_01: 14:27

So we don't have any cooling. We have paid a lot of attention to opening windows to make sure we can get cross ventilation. So you can if you open a window on either side of opposite sides of the house, just a little bit, you can draw air through and make sure the air is flowing nicely. So that that's that's what we do for cooling. We have a skylight that opens up right at the top of the house. So again, that draws the cold air from downstairs, up the spiral stair, and out the skylight out the top. Wow. So so no cooling. We do have a central heating system, just one radiator on each floor, and the top one barely does anything. I uh it's the bottom one that does all the work.

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

Okay, and what sort of challenges did you have building that? And how big is the section?

SPEAKER_01: 15:16

Uh yeah, so the section is a hundred square meters.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

What the section is one hundred square meters.

SPEAKER_01: 15:21

Yeah, so half the size of the average New Zealand house.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 15:26

And the it took a long time to do the process. So I might just rewind a little bit. I was looking for a piece of land to build on, and there was no way I could afford anything in Wellington or where I wanted to live. My friends had recently bought a house in Brooklyn, and it had this south-facing front yard with an old crumbling garage on it. And I just said to the monster cuff, Oh, I could build something there. And then a wee while later, the conversation came back again, and I thought, oh, well, maybe maybe we should look into this a bit further. So this process started of where I would subdivide and buy their garage and front yard off them and still provide them with access and parking and the like. And it was a win-win. It paid down their mortgage, reduced their mortgage, and I got a cheap piece of land.

SPEAKER_00: 16:27

Whereabouts in Wellington is it?

SPEAKER_01: 16:29

So it's in it's in Brooklyn, it's up on the ridge near Vogelmorn.

SPEAKER_00: 16:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 16:33

So the land was pretty marginal. Like it's in a sea of garages.

SPEAKER_00: 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:39

And south facing, so not much sun in the wintertime. But it's close to town. It had really nice views across a lot of greenery looking to the south. And it's also, yeah, walking distance both to Newtown and the city. And I think there's this great thing about south-facing sites in Wellington is you don't have any wind a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_00: 17:06

I was about to say, how's the wind situation?

SPEAKER_01: 17:09

It's fantastic a lot of the time because we get a northerly most of the time. But then when it flicks to a southerly, you do get it then. But that's not very often, so it's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00: 17:17

Okay. So what was the challenge with the council? How did you get away with the council for that?

SPEAKER_01: 17:21

Yeah, so at the time, subdivision rules were ignore that.

SPEAKER_00: 17:30

Sounds like you've got a visitor. Someone's ringing a bell, and I keep forgetting to move the bell thingy from my office to anywhere else in the house. And you know the funniest thing? No one else in the house can hear the bell unless the dog barks. So what we'll do is we'll just pause for one second and I'll just alert the other people. Otherwise, the bell will keep ringing. But what I would love for you to keep talking about is the challenges that we have with the council.

SPEAKER_01: 17:59

Yeah, so the council was an interesting process. We needed to demonstrate that we could get a compliant dwelling on this tiny piece of land, which was definitely a real challenge. I guess it was one of where the skills of an architect came into play, is I knew how to work the rules. I knew the rules really intricately. And also from a design background, I knew how I could push the limits of those rules. So to satisfy the council, I needed to show them that I could get this weird dwelling on this very small site without breaking any rules. And fortunately, they were reasonably on board with what I'd shown them. And we needed to get services to the site, which was a real process as well. I needed to work out how to get all of the the stormwater and sewer pipes down the road to uh the council mains. It sounds simple, but it actually wasn't. But one of the other main aspects was actually dividing the plot of land so that we could get a mortgage for the build.

SPEAKER_00: 19:15

Yeah, because that was gonna be that's my area of interest, right? So it's like, how do you get a mortgage on that sort of subdivision? Like what challenges did you get?

SPEAKER_01: 19:26

Yeah, so the actually the the banks were reasonably on board with me being an architect and having experience in that field. So I think having that professional background really worked in my favour. But I think because it was a relatively complex process, uh if it were a client, I think having that professional backing would not only facilitate the process for the client, it facilitates uh the process with the bank as well, because they know you've got that consultant overseeing everything and making ticking boxes and the like.

SPEAKER_00: 20:08

Were you one of the first to build something like that on such a small piece of land? I reckon?

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

Yes, yeah. It was the the council were very intrigued by it because it was so small and in the outer. Residential suburbs. So you normally can only at that time rather, you could only build to 35% of the site. There were very restrictive envelope rules like pushing you down, making really restricting the size of what you could build. And I think why the council found it interesting is because they knew they were going to have to change the rules in Wellington at some point to allow people to build on smaller sites. So they really were quite interested in the project. And sure enough, about two years after we finished, they changed the rules and now it would be a shoe-in. But at the time, at the time it yeah, it it raised a few eyebrows.

SPEAKER_00: 20:59

You had to jump through lots of hoops.

SPEAKER_01: 21:01

Yeah, I needed to demonstrate that even though it was small, that it was still a functioning dwelling, I'd built up we'd broken a lot of the rules, and I had to demonstrate that there weren't negative impacts on people around. Like, for example, even though it's a three-story tower and quite tall, I needed to take good care that I wasn't blocking the views of neighbours, particularly my friends. Like I didn't want to damage their asset.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:32

So it was really important that care was taken to make sure that their bedroom wasn't staring into my living room or that their their that my outdoor space wasn't just looking at their car or something like that. So there was a real there was a real sense of care that needed to be taken all while stretching the rules that we were breaking to get the council over the line. And not only get the council over the line, but just get a good result.

SPEAKER_00: 22:00

How long did it take you to come up with the drawings that you've come up with?

SPEAKER_01: 22:05

Well, that was a long process. I was doing it in weekends after work. So it probably took me a year and a half to come to a design and then another six months after that, actually finalizing it. But that was because it was weekends work. So but yeah, it was a it was a it was a long and slow process.

SPEAKER_00: 22:22

Yeah. But now that you've done it once, you've got the blueprint for it. So if someone else came up to you and they said, We've got this tiny piece of land, could you build us the same sort of house? You can, right? It's much easier.

SPEAKER_01: 22:35

Yes, yeah. I mean, particularly now that I've been through the process, the council have loosened their rules somewhat, and I know what to look for and what sort of hoops to jump through. I'm it's funny if I can drive around Wellington and I go, Well, there's a garage I could put one of my houses on. There's another one. Oh, this might be a slightly different shape, but I could probably build something there. It's it's it's amazing. Just within a stone's throw of my property, there are a dozen garages that could be turned into a house.

SPEAKER_00: 23:07

Yeah, I think you should do a lift drop. Yeah. Turn your garage into an award-winning house. How cool would that be?

SPEAKER_01: 23:16

I mean, yes, yeah, great, great tips there. Thank you. There you go. I'm gonna need to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 23:21

But for those that are really curious about your thing, and honestly, yesterday I just had a client and they're looking to buy something little in Wellington. You know, it's two friends, and they both just want something functional for them. They don't want to leave there full time. Maybe one will live there full-time, the other one will come and go. And I've told them about your project. And then we went on your website, we had a look at your floor plan and what it looks like. And honestly, her eyes lit up, and she was like, Wow, this is really cool. This is really, really cool. Because yeah, for someone that just, you know, two friends, they don't need to be in each other's space. Like, you could divide those three floors, yeah, and they only really want to come, sleep, go have a party in Wellington, because Wellington actually has a lot to offer versus cuperity. No offense to Cuperity, we'll love Capity, but he has other beautiful things. Capit has other beautiful things, you know. And like my my friend, she this client friend, she's all she's curious about is going to Wellington, having a good, you know, art session or dancing session. Evening a pad. Yeah, you know, and just having somewhere that she can park herself in. And not many people want to live in an apartment, but this offers the best of both worlds. You sort of have your own house, the size of the apartment.

SPEAKER_01: 24:39

Yeah, it's essentially what it is. We've got a small yard, it keeps me busy gardening-wise. I love the garden, and I love it because it's a small garden as well. What do you grow? We've mainly got natives for the moment. It's a sort of, shall we say, we call it the Hokkien Garden, my mum's Hokkien Malaysian. And so it's got this slightly Asian twist, but using New Zealand plants.

SPEAKER_00: 25:01

I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:01

Yes, kind of that's that's where it's heading. It's still a work in progress.

SPEAKER_00: 25:05

Okay, I would love to see it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:06

You're very welcome next time.

SPEAKER_00: 25:08

Micah, can I get you back for another session to dive a little bit deeper into why what's the difference between architect and draftsman? And like obviously I build three houses, right? And I build through big companies, and they would have some sort of in-house architect or someone that they would use. I have no idea how it worked. Basically, I was dealing with a sales consultant from the building company, and then I would tell them what I want, they would go away, bring me something, and then I would make tweaks to that. But I never really actually chatted with anyone that does what you do. So I'm really curious to know how it works for the bigger companies and smaller companies, and why would people use an architect, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

Yeah, we can have you back.

SPEAKER_01: 25:51

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and we can delve into that.

SPEAKER_00: 25:54

Okay, sounds really, really good. So, five minutes of fame that I usually give to my clients is where can people find you? What should they put into Google to find your details? And what sort of clients can you work with? Is it all over New Zealand or is it Wellington only?

SPEAKER_01: 26:08

Go ahead. So to find me, my name is Micah, and it's got an H on the end. So M-I-C-A-H, and you can usually find me by just searching architecture, Micah, Small Home. You can also find me by searching my house's name, which is the Walker Box. That's a whole different story as to why it's called that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:29

Okay, so we've got to dive into that as well. We can dive into that as well.

SPEAKER_01: 26:33

That's a bit of a personal story.

SPEAKER_00: 26:34

Okay, awesome. Thank you, Micah, so much for coming along. And I can't wait to have you back. Great.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Thank you, Zebanisa.

SPEAKER_00: 26:42

Thank you. Bye.