As a family we had developed a strong connection to the surrounding landscape from the sea to the hills. The brief was to develop a design that reflected that connection to the surrounding context and by doing so produce a new home that sat easily within the landscape.
Indigenous plant species such as Banks Peninsula Hebe inhabit rock crevices along with rare ferns. The more exposed hillsides are covered with silver tussock and other native grasses, unusually so for an area so close to urban development.
Innovation & collaboration
A key ingredient of the Innovation and creativity for this project was based around people and their passion. From brickwork, carpentry, internal joinery to the person driving the digger exposing the rock formations we looked for people that shared a love of their craft and that were passionate about what they do. This type of collaboration brought lots of different perspectives together that helped drive the design throughout the entire build process.
Constraints and Opportunities
The sites natural setting provided both constraints and opportunities that directly drove the design brief and final outcome. The strong view lines to the Southern Ocean and Port hills needed to be carefully integrated. The extend of the volcanic rock seam running through the site was an unknown and something that needed to be dealt with once excavations started. This was one of the site constraints that we altered the design around to take advantage of the opportunity it provided.
