By Solarei Architecture
Te Kauwhata House, North Waikato, New Zealand
Te Kauwhata House is located in Northern Waikato amongst rolling rural landscape with sweeping views of pine forests and farmland. Designed to peer out over landscape and views, large roof overhanging hover overhead shading the house in summer, and insulated concrete slabs and thermal mass walls are optimised for passive solar gain naturally heating the during winter. Centralised clerestory works as a climate chimney creating a natural stack effect, naturally ventilating and cooling the house during warmer months.
'Awarded First Place Equal in the CCANZ (Cement and Concrete Association of New Zealand), Concrete 3 Sustainability Awards, for Residential Design'
Photographer: Francis Oliver Photography Limited
Solarei Architecture was born out of a passion to deliver well designed, creatively focused, collaboratively based, budget conscious, environmentally responsive house designs to our clients.
What we design combines client aspirations with a creative environmental response, using clever design strategies to achieve this. Our objective is to creatively design homes which are based on environmental sustainable design principles, and the human experience.
Environmental sustainable design principles take into consideration a meaningful engagement with environment and climate. Design principles we use are based on smart orientation, passive solar, passive design strategies, natural warmth, passive cooling, cross ventilation, and stack effect. High performance building materials, energy efficiency, smart green technologies, and healthy building materials are some of the ingredients we use to achieve this.
By using this design approach, we are able to design a house which is naturally warm in winter, naturally cool in summer, gets the most of unique site features, and is always enjoyable to live in.
Fostering engaging relationships with clients, based on listening, honesty, and mutual exchanging of ideas has resulted in many successful award-winning projects, with national (NZ) and international recognition of our work.
Currently we are working on projects in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Please get in touch if our work interests you.