Collection by Paul Velici
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"Curled into a natural amphitheatre, this gentle timber house turns to face the sun rather than the sea. Responding to the landform, its simple semicircle creates north-facing spaces sheltered from onshore winds. One corner braves the sea cliff, facing the salt and spray, but most of the house is surrounded by bush and orients towards a small valley—the ocean all the more present for being ignored formally."
"Set in splendid isolation in a small, surf-battered bay on the north coast of Horomaka Banks Peninsula, this rustic style dwelling is luxury accommodation at Annandale, a 4000-hectare beef and sheep farm. The bay is nature in the raw. Seals and penguins frequent the dense kelp beds offshore, whales and dolphins travel the coastline, and piled on the beach are tangles of bleaching driftwood. Faced with such an uncompromising location, architect Andrew Patterson eschewed a modern or abstracted path—which, he reasons, 'would have fought the timeless nature of the bay’—in favour of a rural vernacular form, albeit on a monumental scale.
"The 1970s houses of Whangamatā were the design source for this new beach bach—the simple gables, lean-tos, decks and yards. ‘The clients and I walked the neighbourhood to have a look at the existing character,’ says architect Paul Clarke. ‘They wanted to build sympathetically in the form and size of the building, so we’ve reused elements we know well, but combined them in a new way to put together something different.’"
"Mountain peaks, river valleys and glacial lakes sketch the sub-alpine landscape of the southern lakes – an environment revered by Jennifer Arnold and Alan Luckie. ‘It’s the wilderness of it all,’ notes Jennifer. ‘That immense space with its diamond sharp air and the ability to engage with all the elements.’ With a bare site overlooking Lake Wakatipu, they engaged architect Vaughn McQuarrie to design a shelter that would ‘sing with the music of the sun, wind and rain’. They discussed bivvies and huts, thermal efficiency and humble materials, and didn’t need (or necessarily want) the final design to resemble a traditional house."










