A small, cost effective three bedroom house situated above the Waimarama Beach settlement in Hawkes Bay. The 130sqm holiday home was designed for an interesting American couple, he a retired minister of the ‘cloth’ and she an equestrian Olympian.
The brief was to create a home that would be an amalgam of church and loose box. Exploring simple volumes, the design was to include truss-work to evoke images of old church interiors and yet be agricultural in nature. It was also to be subtle and blend with the surrounding nature.
The compact house has three zones. The main kitchen/dining/living zone is separated from the bedroom area by a ‘verandah’ space. This outdoor room is covered with a translucent roof allowing year round use, and admitting soft light to the space through to the living areas. The house is orientated to the view of the beach and Bare Island to the east, with the roof of the outdoor room orientated to the north.
The building has a restricted palette of materials – the exterior is clad entirely in black corrugated colorsteel, the interior linings are pine plywood and the flooring is polyurethaned plywood. The shower linings are galvanised mini corrugated steel. External joinery is black powdercoated aluminium. A suspended black steel fireplace also creates a dramatic insertion to the living space.
The house had to be closed down when the couple were not in residence. To this end, corrugate clad panels are raised vertically by counterweight, along the entire south elevation, then housed within a cavity in the roof space – a modern day ‘double hung’ window.More…
