atelierworkshop was founded in 2000 by Cècile Bonnifait and William Giesenbased on a duality of thought and language as a working process. Both trained architects, they each have different and diverse architectural experience in various parts of the world that combine professional work and research. Their approach is orientated towards reconnecting people with a physical reality, a territory, its history and a cultural context.
The dark, primeval mountains and jagged ravines of New Zealand are free of rampaging Orcs, but Middle-earth, 2007, has another nuisance on the loose. It is the load-bearing truck, carrying a quaint, preloved homestead—or rather, two trucks with two halves of a quaint, preloved homestead—causing traffic chaos en route to the wine region of Wairarapa.
The McKenzie residence sits within the grid of a commercial apple orchard, its roof and upper parts floating above the trees to echo the surrounding hills. Although its steel cladding is suggestive of a barn, inside it is anything but.
