Testimonials
We thoroughly enjoyed the whole process with Sam and the team at DAA. We trusted their expertise and guidance, were grateful for their patience, good taste and good humour, feeling entirely at ease in their hands. They have crafted a beautiful, well thought through home that delights whilst being acutely functional for our family.
After engaging DAA to design a new home on a rural lot, I quickly developed a professional and trusting relationship with Tim.
Tim was passionate and philosophical, practical and persistent.
It’s been a pleasure to work with Tim and his team over the two extended phases of our home and office building project. It has taken a long time to complete – interrupted by a pandemic no less – but the end product was worth waiting for!
We really appreciated Tim’s friendly, down-to-earth and collaborative methods. We always felt part of the process… never detached from it.
Our builder also appreciated and enjoyed working with DAA – and that never happens!
Our extension that DAA designed for us exceeded our lofty expectations.
We found the creative process inspiring, collaborative and felt well guided through each step of the building process.
From the material palette through to the final bold architectural forms, everything large or small was grounded in Sam’s considered aesthetic and his understanding of the ethos of the project.
DAA’s design process was a joy.
They understood and translated our needs into a result that transformed the space into something we weren’t able to imagine without their talent!
Working as a team to resurrect this gem of a house was a delight.
We approached Tim Dorrington when we finally decided to renovate our dated home on a great site in rural Auckland.
Tim guided us through the entire process from the original concept and maintained great communication with ourselves, our builder and various key sub-contractors.
Tim designed a warm, light-filled space with many ‘wow’ design features and materials which have stood the test of time. A stunning outdoor Pavilion, modern reflection pond and open, social areas for entertaining enhanced our brief, resulting in polished style we could never have dreamed up ourselves.
Over a decade later we are still happily enjoying our transformed home, still receiving compliments and are very happy to recommend Tim and his team at DAA for any architectural requirements.
When we purchased our property it was the cliche “worst house on the best street” scenario. Not realising till some time later that we may have taken on more of a renovation project than we thought we went looking for an Architect who could work with us and be willing to take on the project. Sam and Tim were recommended and after our first meeting we soon realised that our vision for the property was a workable one and to enhance its quirky features and also create a contemporary feel DAA were the perfect fit for us.
A clever use of space and attention to detail is what we loved most about working with them. Problem solving is definitely a strength and although we took a couple of years to renovate and after a lot of patience and understanding we ended up with a stunning family home for us all.
The house was designed to accomodate certain areas needed for young adults and spaces to work from home, its absolutely brilliant and after almost 11 years we are still here. (And so are the adult children!!!) We are always getting comments on how great the house is. We love it and really do hope we get the chance to work with DAA again.
I asked Tim Dorrington and Sam Atcheson of DAA to design a medical practice for me in 2010. My vision and purpose was to offer patients a serene environment to calm their anxiety at what can be difficult medical times in their lives.The brief was ‘relaxing, disruptive and boutique’.
They came up with a visually and spiritually pleasing design that was supervised by Sam to completion and Cemac Interiors came through for us with a timely build.
Well… it’s ten years later and some of the furniture has changed because of my love of Mid-Century Modern but the space remains timeless, calm and best of all, (almost all) of the patients love it.It’s rooted in the past but will survive well into the future. I still love working there!
We started with the classic brief of needing to modernise our home, increase the footprint and open it up to more light. Design-wise we wanted to be modern and bold and invoke mid-century design themes.
Sam and the team surpassed our expectations in designing a home that met all of our functional requirements as well creating a bold architectural statement. The team were a pleasure to work with throughout, always down-to-earth and approachable and supportive of achieving our vision.
Our new home functions wonderfully well and is aesthetically stunning. DAA were absolutely the right partner to choose and made us realise what was possible.
We love our 1920’s bungalow with it’s rich history and our local community in Bayswater, but with a growing family we were quickly running out of space. We had always thought we’d need to move when our kids got a bit bigger but we found ourselves talking about whether this could be our “forever home”.
We asked Tim and the team at DAA to help us renovate our bungalow in a way which would be functional, bring light and views to our home, be sympathetic to the original architecture and live within our budget! Tim listened (a lot) and then came up with a bold design that we loved and which ticked all our boxes.
DAA worked with us on the important design decisions throughout the build and helped us get a result we are quite simply delighted with.
Tim and team have been as vested in this renovation as we have – it has been evident all along that they wouldn’t be happy until we were.Thanks DAA – we couldn’t be happier with our renovated home.
We took DAA on to help us design and build a new house on a lifestyle block in the Coromandel. We wanted something special to do justice to our spot’s location and some pretty lovely views.
Through a thoughtful design, Sam and the team introduced some nice aesthetic elements as well as spot-on functionality within our modest footprint and budget. A hidden panel both hides the pantry beautifully and helps close off the utility room on cold nights. Statement sliding barn doors frame an outdoor room and allow us to mitigate the weather. Early in the process we put a lot of consideration into how we live, and how we wanted to live, and feel like, in collaboration with DAA, we got it just right.
With the added challenge of living down in Wellington while we were building and only making it to site around once a month, we were always confident that DAA were in our corner, and they did a great job of finding solutions for us throughout the build process when challenging elements cropped up.
Good friends have said that the house ‘really feels like us’, and while we had thought we might spend 10 years or so here, we suspect we may be enjoying this house for a lot longer than the next decade.
We had bought an original 1900s villa, and with one of us being a villa lover and the other preferring a minimalist modern look, Tim had his work cut out for him. He came up with a brilliant design that made both of us happy and solved the problem of creating indoor-outdoor flow that had been prevented by the fact that the original villa sat one storey high off the back lawn.
The living pavilion accessed by an internal stair and glass atrium was an original and striking solution. We now have a practical family home, that maintains the integrity of the original villa with plenty of interesting architectural details that don’t follow the standard villa renovation conventions.
We had a number of issues during the planning and build process that Tim handled calmly and creatively. We would certainly recommend DAA to anyone considering a renovation or new build.
We had used Tim and DAA to renovate our previous bungalow in Grey Lynn which was stunning but unfortunately proving too small for a growing family. So when we suddenly bought a section in Westmere that came with a decrepit house, we had the confidence to take the plunge and undertake a new build knowing Tim would deliver for us. We left it completely up to Tim and DAA to come up with an awesome idea and they didn’t disappoint.
We were blown away with the design which far exceeded what we thought was possible on our budget and space. We were also very impressed with extra design surprises that we had never envisaged. Tim listened to exactly what we wanted and we love our house.
It has been cleverly designed to capture all day sun with designated areas for living, entertaining, kids downstairs, pool, master “wing” for parents to retreat and double garage. The details are very important to us – like the hidden doors in the hallway, pocket garden, stunning roof line, as are the beautiful materials used throughout. The process was well driven by DAA and the productive working relationship with our awesome builder Boyd Senior was a huge asset. We feel very lucky to be living in this expertly crafted and designed house.
I engaged DAA to design my Titirangi home in 2012. I know a few architects personally, so asked them who they recommended (other than themselves) and Tim and Sam were consistently named in those recommendations.
It was the right choice. Many people say building a house is stressful. But (spending the money aside), I loved the process and much of the credit for that sits with DAA. They listened to my ideas, shared theirs, were happy to debate and be challenged. They were empathetic and understood what I was trying to create in a home. It felt like they cared about the project as much as I did.
Their best qualities shone through when we did hit judder bars. Communication was always honest, clear and accountable. In the two years between first meeting and finally moving in, I never had a moment of feeling anything other than full trust and confidence.
Having lived in the house for nearly 7 years now, I’m so glad I chose DAA. My initial brief was very much about how I wanted the house to feel and function, so that it was a home suited to me and my family. It fulfils that perfectly and I wake up every morning grateful to live in it.
When we met Tim Dorrington we knew instantly that DAA was right for us, and we were delighted that he was interested in designing our house. We’d been following DAA’s work for some time, and as we wanted to build an American midcentury style post and beam house, DAA’s expertise in this style of build was important to us.
Tim was able to explain how the process of design and build would work to us really clearly, and the management of the project certainly lived up to these promises all the way through.
We thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, Tim and Libby’s care and attention to detail with what was a dream come true to us was so appreciated and made the whole experience a joy. We were delighted with what was achieved with our modest budget, and that this budget was respected and all care taken to ensure the project did not over-run in costs, which it did not except where we made the decision to add things ourselves.
We love our incredible home and our ongoing relationship with DAA and our builders, Stehr Bros. DAA designed a future extension to the house as part of the big picture and we look forward to getting on with that one day soon.
Would not hesitate to recommend this talented, down to earth team to help you realise your dream home.
After short-listing three architects for our project, we decided to work with Tim Dorrington due to his easy rapport and the confidence he inspired in leading our extensive renovation. It proved a great decision. Tim took away much of the stress for us as first-time renovators. He interfaced with the builder, engineers and Council, effectively dealing with difficult issues that arose along the way.
His design flair was exceptional. He seamlessly integrated the old with the new, achieving a house that was architecturally elegant as well as practical for our family.
We were delighted with the end result and ten years later are still in love with our house.
Having lived near Cox’s Bay since our kids were little we always dreamed of building our own home on the edge of the park and in 2016 we finally found the perfect site. We had a clear view of what we wanted out of our home but we had a very open mind as to how it would work. Tim interpreted our random and poorly articulated ideas perfectly.
The first concept he presented back to us gave us a huge deal of confidence that DAA understood what we were about and would deliver us a home that we would love.
Tim and his team guided us through the entire design and delivery process working closely with CTL Construction, and involving us in the evolution of the design in a way which has added to our ongoing enjoyment of our home. A year after finishing we continue to value the quality of the design and are loving seeing our home work for our family as we envisaged.