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The house is a strikingly modern, elegantly balanced and creatively playful response to the brief, overlooking a deep escarpment, across the hills to the ocean of the Bay.
The design is made up of three core elements. A single red brick wall forms the backbone of the house, the only exterior wall, running the length of the southwest elevation. It supports a flat, deep roof plane that floats above the floor. Three cedar-clad boxes are the third element, one forming the double height garage and the other two penetrating the roof plane to allow in light and air.
The clients indicated a preference for modernism and had always wanted a strongly architectural home. They liked the privacy and rural nature of the site and wanted to make the most of the incredible views. After COVID they saw an opportunity to escape Auckland for Hawkes Bay and to build the house of their dreams.
Although the brief was fairly simple the clients were a significant part of the process, offering up their own ideas and preferences as part of the ongoing design dialogue. They like to live a minimalist lifestyle and without excessive ornamentation. The view is the hero of the project and the house is designed to highlight that. Brick, glass, concrete, timber and steel come together in an elegant balan
We're an architecture and design studio creating warm spaces for human connection. We believe architecture thrives on play and exploration, where clever solutions and clear dialogue create a dynamic interplay between all the elements of a project, bringing them all into balance.
Our directors, Tim Dorrington and Sam Atcheson, have spent over twenty years developing a design philosophy that's playful, balanced and inclusive. Clever solutions to interesting challenges are one of the hallmarks of our work, as is an eternally-youthful enthusiasm for creating truly transformative design. We like to think of it as delivering just enough surprise to truly delight our clients.
We're proud of the impact our team has made on the built environment of Aotearoa, with multiple NZIA Awards to our name and a roster of happy clients. We specialise in residential projects, but have also had success with retail and commercial environments.
Our approach is highly collaborative. While we often draw on the rich lineage of mid-century modernism, we're not design dictators. Every project is a response to site, budget and our clients dreams and objectives. It's an honest and open process, which reflects in the materiality of our buildings and the experience of the spaces we create.
Our design philosophy:
playful, human, balanced, clever, inclusive, transformative.
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