Project Timber: Cox Street Christchurch Residential Home

JSC Timber worked alongside Coll Architecture on a beautiful, warm, and inviting family home based in Christchurch that wraps around a centrally located reflection pond. The main aim of this forever family home was to set a welcoming scene for the owners with a neutral palette for them to express their design style over time.

The environmental context was a very important consideration in this neighbourhood of eclectic styles and ensuring the building’s design features fit within the architectural heritage of Christchurch. Mitchell Coll was focused on keeping the strong white gabled forms of the Christchurch School Style with crisp detailing and employed rusticated weatherboards to the gable ends to soften the masculine form and tie in with the neighbouring designs of the 1980s.

A fresh look at the overall property was to keep most of the existing vegetation and landscaping on site including the large tree that is located at the front of the site near to the garage. This helps the home to already sit ingrained within the already established street scene. In addition, a large amount of planting was done on the front boundary to avoid the need for a fence which generously shares the space and greenery to an otherwise enclosed street of the neighbourhood.

As a family home with potentially high energy consumption, it was important to address energy efficiency inherently in the design. A major factor in the design was the reflectance of the light-coloured roofing and the Alaskan Yellow Cedar rusticated timber cladding profile which both worked in reducing the occurrence of overheating and lowering the long-term maintenance of the materials and therefore lowering the carbon footprint of the building.

For this project Mitchell Coll specifically chose JSC's Alaskan Yellow Cedar for the exterior cladding for its even texture, straight grain and uniform lighter colour. Alaskan Yellow Cedar is a slow growing, tough, solid tree and the hardest known Cedar, while also boasting exceptional longevity.  It is considerably harder and denser than most commercial softwoods including Western Red Cedar, and therefore it is much stronger making it a top-class cladding material. Alaskan Yellow Cedar is very well known for its exceptional workability and inherent impact and decay resistance.

To complement the light coloured roof, JSC Alaskan Yellow Cedar cladding is coated with “Wood-X Veil” which gave an unmatched look to this stunning family home.

The interior as beautiful as the exterior where Coll Architecture worked in collaboration with interior designers Lucy Wilkie Design where they have used a largely neutral palette to act as a canvas for the owners to add their own individual style with furnishings and therefore have the ability to easily change the feel and fashion of the interior design over time. 

It has been so exciting to see this build come to life and we cannot wait to see the next one! 

Architect: Coll Architecture

Imagery: Stephen Goodenough Photographer

Interior Design: Lucy Wilkie Design

Builder: Fuetz & Goldsmith Builders