Classic architecture with team Brooksfield

A mutual admiration of classic, elegant, and timeless architecture led two young Christchurch entrepreneurs on a journey from fixing earthquake damaged homes to a booming development business. Metropol Editor Lynda Papesch catches up with the men behind the Brooksfield projects.

From renovation projects to 250-build housing developments, Vincent (Vinny) Holloway and Oliver (Oli) Hickman have spent the last decade spearheading a colonial housing revival. Their company, Brooksfield, has built about 600 classic homes in and around Christchurch in the decade since the catastrophic earthquakes. Renowned for their heritage-inspired developments, designed by British architect Ben Pentreath, the duo have now expanded into Auckland.

Co-founders and directors of Brooksfield, Vinny and Oli combined their strengths a decade ago to follow their love of classic architecture; the former a qualified builder, and the latter
a successful realtor. Their ethos is simple: build classic houses featuring the best of architecture from the past, with today’s quality materials and conveniences.

“Most people in New Zealand want to buy a character house,” explains Vinny. “Our builds are modern versions of older homes.” Both love classic Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian style housing, and being true to their natures, both live in gorgeous character homes. For Oli, home is a renovated 1923 colonial revival home designed by notable Canterbury architect Heathcote Helmore.
“I love the symmetry of it,” he expains. “It’s well proportioned, with good bones, and lets lots of light in. It’s unique to Christchurch because of the architect.”

Vinny’s home is more a villa style, again sympathetically renovated into a family home, while retaining all its original character. That love of character architecture is something they share with many thousands throughout New Zealand, and is one of the reasons behind their drive to “make Christchurch beautiful again”.

Currently they have 25 developments under way, equating to 178 houses. “As a developer, it is about improving the land in a sense; about taking a $700,000 section, putting five houses on it, and realising a value of $4million,” says Vinny.

“On a personal level, it is about building beautiful homes to last. Classic style builds tend to not only be renovated; they’re also repurposed on a bigger scale.” On the subject of repurposing, the Brooksfield team is doing just that with well-known Christchurch heritage building Eliza’s Manor, turning it from boutique hotel and restaurant into its company headquarters and offices. The manor is a perfect example of repurposing, Vinny points out, adding that is due to its classic beauty rather than today’s modernist architecture.

One of the guiding principles of modernist architecture is that form follows function, and a building’s purpose is paramount to the design, taking precedence over beauty. Classicism combines beauty with functionality, which is why the manor is a prime candidate for repurposing, and has been for decades. “Over the years it has been a home, hotel, boarding house, hospital, and now it is becoming an office,” says Vinny.

The manor will soon resume its original creamy yellow heritage colour scheme, with new landscaping to offset its beauty. Key to all the team’s projects is an architect known for creating heirtage-inspired designs for the royal family. “We strictly use a classical architect called Ben Pentreath, who’s based in the UK,” says Vinny. “He does new, classical architecture, or what you could call new traditional architecture.”

As the pair explain, it’s just using the principles of Georgian or Victorian architecture in modern day houses, and taking the time and materials to make them stand the test of time. “Classicism has been prominent in architecture for 3000 years, and it is still beautiful,” says Oli, referencing the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome as far back as the fifth and third centuries respectively.

“It’s not just about the money; we have a passion for what we are doing rather than knocking up houses as quickly as possible as some companies do,” he adds. Their focus is on creating homes that are affordable and “around the median house price” as well as being beautiful and lasting. In Christchurch, and now Auckland, that also means enhancing rather than disturbing a neighbourhood’s feel.

Single and two-storey heritage homes with sympathetic garden design, stylish neutral interior finishes, solar power wherever possible, and architecture that suits the neighbourhood is the order of the day. “All of our houses have historical precedents,” says Vinny. “We don’t make it up, we actually take elements from existing buildings and use them. We solely build in timber and brick, proven materials.”

Every city has its own character, with Georgian, Edwardian, and Victorian architecture plentiful in Christchurch, yet not a lot of Georgian in Auckland. Importantly, the homes and gardens are designed while considering what it would actually be like to live in them, and in the specific neighbourhoods they occupy. “They’re all homes we would want to live in ourselves,” Vinny and Oli add.