Modern New Zealand Mountain Retreat | Lake Wakatipu | New Zealand | Fearon Hay Architects

Mountain Retreat is a small structure set within a high country station, adjacent Lake Wakatipu, Central Otago. The colours and textures of the cladding integrate the building into the gravel tracks, exposed rock faces and scree slopes of the alpine environment. The architecture seeks to be a subtle insertion in the alpine landscape. The internal environment is both muscular and refined, referencing the toughness of the environment while providing comfort required for a retreat in the mountains......more

Modern New Zealand House | Parihoa House | Auckland | Pattersons

A rural castle on a wind swept hill, this home responds to the environment as a fortress enclosing a luxury sanctuary for family living.......more

Modern Courtyard House In Waiheke Island | New Zealand | Daniel Marshall Architects

A ridge stretching between the Hauraki Gulf and the pastoral landscape of Waiheke Island provided a stunning, and challenging, context in which to design a home. Our approach was to work within the contour of the ridge, as an attempt to minimise the impact on the landscape. The plan form of the house is spaced between two courtyards, which are bridged by a gabled roof stretched across the long axis. The courtyards provide the opportunity to shelter from either of the two dominant winds.The materiality of the house draws on two architectural conditions of Waiheke, the masonry forms were inspired by the gun emplacements of Stoney Batter. The use of cedar and plywood reflect precarious weekenders of the island’s past......more

Modern Suburban House | 9 Elmstone | Auckland | New Zealand | Daniel Marshall Architects

A suburban context – the site splays out from the end of a quiet Auckland cul-de-sac and slopes steeply away towards the North.

The brief was to provide a family home for a young family. It was important to maintain open ground for the boys to play on and to allow for a vegetable garden. The house was to be as economic as possible considering it’s 400m2 floor area.

The architectural strategy that developed was to arrange house volumes as densely as possible in such a configuration, which dealt with the steep site, and to ensure that ample ground was left in play for the boys. Spaces are arranged vertically over three levels, each with its own distinct outlook toward the garden and pool. The primary form is en- closed beneath a single sloped roof, which allows variation of floor and ceiling levels to individualise the spatial experience throughout the home.

Industrial materiality; precast concrete walls and simple concrete floors, play against the sophisticated yet subtle detailing of more traditional residential finishes. The placement of concrete elements within the home contributes to a thermal mass to absorb the heat from plentiful northern and eastern sun to regulate internal temperature of the house......more

Timber House | Island Bach 1 | Great Barrier Island | Herbstarchitects

This bach on Great Barrier Island has a clarity of vision combined with a profound humility. A tower and a pavilion are sheathed in weathered timber planks that offer protection from the elements, but can be slid back to allow an engagement with the environment. Interior and exterior distinctions are blurred and at night it radiates like a Japanese lantern. In this building the bach tradition is combined with modernist formal sensibility to produce a sublime piece of architecture............more

A House For A Young Couple | Wonderview House | New Zealand | Herbstarchitects

Designed for a young couple to accommodate their social lifestyle and desire to merge their work lives with their social lives.

The building acknowledges the hybrid nature of the house/bach brief by articulating the building in 2 parts.

A rectilinear spiral block wall seats the building into the steep landscape and orders the site, while providing level areas and separate guest accommodation.

A lightweight one bedroom bach sits lightly on and cantilevering over the plinth element.

The bach component of the building thrusts forward toward the expansive views to the south while the roof peels open towards the north to allow penetration of sunlight.

A sense of privacy from the proximate overlooking neighbours is achieved through the positioning of a screen device on the deck.............more

Edwards House | Waiheke Island, New Zealand | Architectus

We proposed adding a rectangular pavilion organised around an outdoor room and forming a courtyard with the cottage. The rectangular form sits naturally on the site given its proportions and allows views and sun through the day. The entrance to the house is via the outdoor room, which both connects and divides the other areas of the building. Doors at either end allow access to more private outdoor areas. External and internal screens and shutters provide security and allow for climate control to suit the conditions. The house was designed with a steeply pitched roof. This is supported on a continuous timber truss fixed at regular intervals to the white bagged block work walls which form the primary enclosure. A continuous plastered bondbeam separates the roof and walls and supports the rafters around the perimeter.....more

Clifford Forsyth House | | Auckland, New Zealand | Architectus

The design concept began with an investigation of the relationship between a light wooden frame and solid retaining block walls, and an ideal of creating the spirit of a boathouse, a place to retreat to, almost a holiday house within the city. The primary elements of construction, frame and walls, sit on a concrete base, while a folded plate roof, underlined with plywood, tops the whole. Block-work elements which began life as a core (enclosing some functions or forming a hearth) are separated, interacting with the frame to divide the space; cupping each end of a 'servant' zone (on the angle of the roof's fold) and compressing the middle of a ‘served' zone. Approached from the street above, the house addresses the public edge with an expressed colonnade and glazed screen stretched between block walls - inclined warmly and welcomingly to the visitor......more

Matakana House | Matakana | New Zealand | Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects

The house was designed as a response to its unique site. A corten steel wall presents a back to a busy road, blocking noise and complementing the surrounding rural landscape....more

Great Barrier House | Great Barrier Island | New Zealand | Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects

The house is nestled in a beautifully private setting surrounded with large Puriri trees, Blackwoods and other natives. The building form is elevated for flood protection, and acknowledges the hill to the west, lifting towards it’s elevation. The living zone opens completely to this setting, and the timber exoskeleton references the surrounding trees. The bedrooms all have protected outdoor space, being closely located to the trees for increased privacy. The house is located to protect the existing vegetation and to make the most of the sun and the native bird life on the property. Being on Great Barrier Island, the building also needed to be sustainable - the following abstract from an e-mail received from the Clients refers to this point: “The outdoor room is a place we spend much of our time, eating, reading, doing homework and siesta-ing; but the feeling of being indoors on those hot summer days with all doors open is also fantastic. Not cold enough (owing to that great low E glass and good design) for fires yet - we have had 2 only for ambience, not heat. “It is an astonishingly decadent feeling lying in a bath of free water, heated by the sun, pumped by solar power. Free as anything! Hot water gets up to 68 degrees in the tank from the sun, and has to be cooled to come out the tap. “With 9 staying and all the laptops, music, washing etc we’ve only run the generator 3 times ever. All the irrigation systems do clever things. So it’s more than a PC nod to sustainability, as you know from all our fussing about timbers and paints.”....more

Dixon House Martinborough | New Zealand | Designgroup Stapleton Elliott

Following the purchase of this green-field site in Martinborough, our client formulated a comprehensive brief to create their weekend retreat as place to enjoy, relax and to share with family and friends.The design is a modern interpretation of the Kiwi batch based upon the creation of simple building forms to articulate an uncluttered lifestyle. The design amalgamates three pavilion forms around an enclosed and sheltered courtyard with seamless access from internal living spaces.
Private pavilions at each end of the house contain master bedroom and guest accommodation. A central pavilion accommodating common living and entertaining spaces connects the private pavilions around the family social centre.
The emphasis of the design is to merge both house and site to provide views to the surrounding mountain ranges, rural horizons and to capture both morning sunrise and late afternoon sun.Considered attention to detailing is inherent throughout, complimented by furniture and artwork that connects inside space with outdoor enclosures to create a private and relaxed retreat.....more

Paetawa House | Pekapeka Beach | Parsonson Architects

This small one bedroom house is located at Pekapeka Beach, a small seaside settlement an hours drive north of Wellington City. It rests on gently undulating dune lands, facing northwest, looking across the road and lower dunes out to the Tasman Sea and Kapiti Island to the west. It is intended for the house to both relate to the horizontality of this landscape and also be at odds with it, as if it had been left there, or washed up. The exterior is composed of a rhythm of painted fibre cement panels. Elements of wall, roof beam, roof layers and brise soleil are expressed separately, with light entering in places in between. There is a sense of horizontal and vertical layering, and metaphorically a sense of dislocation or decomposition of parts, as if a creature or construction had been left high and dry above the tide.....more

Northland House | Wellington, New Zealand | Parsonson Architects

The house sits on a high ridgeline overlooking Wellington Harbour with orientation in two directions, east to the harbour and hills beyond and west to the afternoon sun. From the road the house peers austerely over the protective courtyard wall, while the inside spaces feel very open and connected to the outside. We were interested in the idea of floating above a landscape, which represented to us a sense of freedom, lightness and appropriateness to this location. Patterns of surface materials are loosely influenced by the tapestry of land viewed from the sky. Some in shifting layers with non-parallel surfaces subtly distorting perspectives. Flooring and decking change in material and texture as they run level from the west courtyard, through the living room and out to the west deck. The roof glides over, unimpeded, like a shadow, perforated at the edges with louvres. Large solid and glazed doors slide to open or close the spaces. The wings of the plan focus the views either east or west and close off the house to the neighbours to the north and south.....more

Salamanca House | New Zealand | Parsonson Architects

Architect's statement on the house:

The house site was subdivided from the original property which contained an existing house designed and lived in by the Government Architect John Campbell in the early 1900’s. It is historically listed and we were therefore keen for the new house to be lower and more subservient in its appearance to the original house while at the same time relating to it formally.
There were many restrictions on the property. The site was tight and relatively steep, the combined properties could not exceed the 50% inner residential site coverage and the new house was required to fit within all sunlight recession planes.
The resultant dwelling fully utilizes its site. Space for the bedrooms and garaging was excavated below, forming a base to the lighter living spaces above. The roof is clad in zinc and is cut and folded cleanly to focus views out to the harbour and diagonally to the trees, while at the same time providing a sense of enclosure and privacy.

More of the house here

Wanaka House | Wanaka, Otago.New Zealand | Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects

Client: Hall Family
Location: Wanaka, Otago
Completion: 2004
Awards: Finalist - NZ Home & Entertaining Home of the Year Award 2005

The house was conceived as objects on the land, immersing the user in the surrounding natural landscape and the changing seasons. The house is low slung and nestled into the landscape, wedged into a gentle gully on the site, allowing for privacy from surrounding dwellings and protection from the northwesterly wind. The house is elegant and transparent, an object touching the land lightly. The garage to the east is disconnected from the main house allowing for a modulation of the built forms in the landscape. This is also the entry point to the house, moving between the timber garage wall along a sculpted gabion wall. Steel sections placed in this wall provide light shafts into the east of the house. The house is to be enjoyed throughout the year, socially and as a retreat from city life.
Images and text from Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects