Palimpsest House

Palimpsest - one that embodies writing, erasure, and rewriting. Something that has a new layer, aspect, or appearance that builds on its memory of the site though intervention. The unique architectural elements exist at the liminal threshold between one element/ condition and another. The movement and memory of the compressed but filtered, forestry condition of arriving through a dense tree lined forest and the beach. The flicker of light through the silhouetted trees and the sharp illuminated line of the horizon. A dramatic transition on approach. The house a palimpsest, a memory of experience, and an intentional play on the movement between counter conditions. A memory of the beach once experienced and a marker that registers and traces the erasure and movement over time around its strict edges, the extremes, geomorphological change over time. The parti of the house is both protectively nestled and perched, hovering above the building platform, as a counterpoints. Both courtyard and pavilion, the home is a compressed but gradient shift between the heightened sense of enclosure to the west and openness and expanse to the east. The project brief called for a weekend home for a small Auckland-based family to share with their friends and loved ones for generations to come. As one moves through the protected, thickness and curvature of the black silhouetted walls and the projected openness and expanse to the east, the horizon. Thresholds and movement through the house are blurred and informal, living opportunities connected but gradually subverting as move from one end of the house to the other.