Ask Murali Bhaskar to design a house for you and you’d better invite him over for dinner too.

“Residential projects are hugely satisfying. They are about people and relationships,” explains Bhaskar. “With residential dwellings, you are dealing with personal space. In some ways, as an architect, you need to demystify the clients’ likes and dislikes before you can set out on a path towards developing spaces they will enjoy. I always insist on going and having a meal or a glass of wine, or spending a couple of hours at their current residence to try and understand their complexities.”

Bhaskar started his life in Kerala, on the south-west coast of India and, after completing a degree in architecture in the early 1980s at the Manipal Institute of Technology, spent a couple of years travelling before arriving in Auckland in late 1987. Work was hard to find immediately following the stock-market crash that year and Bhaskar, faced with limited options, decided to take a job in New Plymouth.

After working for a small architectural firm in the city for seven years, he joined Boon Goldsmith Bhaskar Brebner Team Architects in 1994 and became a director in 1999.

“Early on in my career, I became interested in the idea of creating a future without destroying the past – creating architecture that understands the complexities of the past,” he says.
As well as the rugged coastlines and alpine vistas that are central to life in and around New Plymouth, history and Bhaskar’s Indian heritage play important roles in his residential designs. Those designs seamlessly fuse indoor and outdoor living, often cleverly making the most of Taranaki’s striking views. Architectural traditions synonymous with southern India – such as the concept of the interior courtyard – find their way into much of his work, as do other aspects of Indian culture.

“There are a myriad of festivals and celebrations in the culture I left behind, so putting colour and light in my designs comes easily,” Bhaskar explains. His recent projects are testament to just that. They fuse the old with the new, capture and use light and incorporate colour to transform otherwise simple spaces into something personal. An Okato, Taranaki, outdoor space which originally housed a spa pool was recently transformed by Bhaskar into an open-air bathroom where full-width sliding doors allow the area to be open to the elements.

“I’m a big fan of lighting spaces without actually seeing the light fittings,” Bhaskar says. “It is a way of coming close to emulating natural lighting and it relies on shielding the light source with materials like glass or acrylic or, in the case of this bathroom, flooding the space between the ceiling and roof with bare LED strip lights and seeing the light bounce down through the gaps between the ceiling panels.”

Another property, a bach on the Oakura Coast, is one of Bhaskar’s favourites. A wall of windows frames the living area to make the most of the dramatic views. “As soon as you walk through the front door,” says Bhaskar, “you are immediately faced with the whole expanse of the coastline.”

One of the outdoor courtyards can be completely enclosed with sliding shutters if the weather dictates.