Lake Hawea Courtyard.

Practice : Glamuzina Paterson ArchitectsLocation : Lake Hawea, WanakaStatus : Completed 2012

The Lake Hawea Courtyard House is grounded in rural land at the foot of Mount Maude in the Otago region. The dominant landscape and big views invited a design enquiry into the nature of the site. What is an appropriate way to occupy such a landscape? How could you define and inhabit the edges of the house? The design response was a low-slung home with a simple square plan that recalls the modest language of the region’s early settler buildings.

It is a refuge in what can be an extreme climate; the fully enclosed stone construction is anchored to the land, its singular form given texture by the irregular shaped bricks that form its armour. At the heart of the home, the courtyard is the middle ground between the domestic scale of the interiors and the vastness of the landscape, framing views to the lofty mountain across low, wide plains.