House Of The Year Awards 2016: Atawhai Appeal

With the expectation of future neighbours at street level impeding the seaward view, finding and keeping a view whilst maintaining a connection to the site required a different approach to the conventional, of a multistory story house running across or into the site.

At one storey, the lower garage and visitor spaces shelter and scale the spaces inhabited daily by the home’s two occupants. This was to support external spaces and connections (be they covered, decked, or on the ground), gain shelter from the western sun, and frame the view as private and unique.

A consistent and simple palette reveals the view differently in each space, with  low maintenance materials and intermittent timber drawing colour and lines from the ever-changing tidal flats below.

Life in the house runs from space-to-space, from ground-to-ground, all at one storey.