About

Totara Pavilion.

ArchiPro Project Summary - Totara Pavilion: A harmonious blend of functionality and nature, featuring a gym, sauna, and bicycle storage, all wrapped around a majestic Totara tree, with extensive timber detailing and seamless integration into the garden.

Title:: Totara Pavilion
Architect:: MC Architecture Studio
Category:: Residential/; Renovations and Extensions
Completed:: 2022
Photographers:: Clinton Lloyd. Photography

Totara Pavilion, a small building that seamlessly complements the existing main house on the street frontage. Situated alongside the boundary in the backyard, this pavilion boasts a gym, rumpus room, bicycle storage with a bike washing area, deck for the SPA, sauna room, and bathroom.

A standout feature of the garden area is the well-established Totara tree, which the pavilion celebrates by wrapping around its trunk and incorporating a floor-to-ceiling window. The design intent focuses on softening the garden's edge with transparency and extensive use of timber, creating a functional building that exudes a sense of calm. The meticulous detailing and transparency through timber windows, movable timber screen, and pergola seamlessly integrate the pavilion with the garden, featuring a series of decks and small steps.

Reflective of the build's character, the interiors showcase oak timber flooring, birch plywood ceilings, and timber joinery. The timber shelving design adds complexity to the simple envelope, introducing dynamism through varying thicknesses and cantilevered shelves. With big skylights in the rumpus room, an intimate connection with the Totara branches and filtering sunlight from the north is established, creating a harmonious space that blends seamlessly with its natural surroundings.

Project Gallery

Views and Engagement

Products used in Totara Pavilion

Truwood® Thermally Modified CladdingRK Timbers

Professionals used in Totara Pavilion

MC Architecture StudioArchitects

RK TimbersManufacturers and Suppliers

INTERIOR TIMBERS: FLOORING & PANELING

EXTERIOR TIMBERS: CLADDING, HARDWOOD DECKING

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INTERIOR TIMBERS: FLOORING & PANELING

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About the Professional

Project Portfolio

MC Architecture Studio (MCAS) works from an uncompromising commitment to innovative, distinctive design and outstanding client service. Each project is unique and is tailored to the specific challenges of the physical site and the precise functionality required by the client. Sensitivity to the wider potential of design is key to the studio process, incorporating awareness of innovative materials and practices as well as aligning with all sustainable features and methods possible within the context of each project. MCAS works closely and consistently in partnership with clients and consultants, responding to needs and maintaining a global outlook that nurtures industry leadership.

Max was exposed to the foundations of design from an early age and worked at his father’s practice in his native Rome. He completed a Masters in architecture and later established his own practice also in Rome. In 2007 he moved to New Zealand and worked with Athfield Architects before establishing MC Architecture Studio ltd.

Collaboration is a consistent feature of the studio and Max is committed to developing local and international networks to cross-pollinate ideas and maintain his connection and currency with best practice and new conceptual thinking. He strongly believes that interaction develops professionalism and human potential.

Although strongly influenced by European standards, processes and aesthetics, Max takes inspiration from many sources. He has travelled extensively and completed his master’s thesis in India where he explored low cost housing. Inspiration comes also from sports and the natural environment - the ocean and the mountains particularly – as well as music and arts.

Max is passionate about built environments that attract and inspire- whether as a public civic building, a retail space or that most personal of buildings – one’s own home.