As a city that wraps itself around two harbours and more than 50 volcanos, Auckland has a topography that is often less than ideal for building on.  The challenge with this project was to construct a family home with three bedrooms and two living areas on a near vertiginous site that also had complicated issues with access. 

Although the dwelling accommodates a family of five, its footprint is a modest 168 square metres. A driveway slivered alongside a Victorian cottage at street level leads to a mechanised turning platform for cars. From here the owners must descend by foot via a set of stairs to the home below.

Modernist in style in a palette of dark timber with floor-to-ceiling glass, the clever design of the two-storey house is planned around a central staircase encased in a ribcage of battens; no corridors mean no wasted space. Oriented for passive solar gain and with concrete floors to capture and slowly release the heat, energy efficiency is integral to the planning.

The Box™ philosophy inhabits a sector of the market that sits midway between bespoke architecture and the products that generic house building companies offer.