Architect Pete Bossley’s Awhitu Peninsula retreat

After a five-year collaborative design process, architect Pete Bossley and artist Miriam van Wezel conceived the vivid red studio and sleepout, which sits behind the Orua Bay bach they bought in 1997.

Pete and Miriam inspect the clay cliffs on the beach, from which Miriam extracts pigment for her artwork.

Pete also paints – bright geometric abstractions on canvas – though mostly creates on his tablet. He calls them ‘tings’, “paintings without paint”.

With Mishka the cat at her feet, Miriam works on a canvas at a moveable work bench in the studio.

Sea views sparkle from the deck of the original bach beside the studio.

Art and objects collected by Pete and Miriam.

For many years, Miriam has been carefully arranging found objects from the beach to create this unique art wall.

Designed to be versatile in its use, the sleepout is a studio, a place to stay, and a retreat for reading at the window seat while looking through the pohutukawa branches at the Manukau Harbour.

Miriam and Pete in the new kitchen of the original bach.

The artwork above the sofa is ‘Light_Dark’ sand on wood panels by Miriam van Wezel (2000). The sofa bed is a Bossley-van Wezel design, fabricated by Michael Draper.

With their bright façades, both the bach (at left) and the new studio (at right) refer to the original bright colours of the other baches in the bay.