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The compact house is sheathed in cypress, glass, and copper and features an expandable roof.

Exterior sliding cedar panels seal off the building when it's not in use and for protection against storms.

The design of Scrubby Bay was inspired by a piece of slowly aging driftwood.

Accessible via helicopter or a 40-minute 4x4 ride overtop clifftop farm tracks, Scrubby Bay offers a remote slice of paradise on a working coastal farm.

"At Tara Iti, south of the Mangawhai Heads, a former pine plantation is gradually being restored to native habitat on the windy coastal sand dunes. On a site overlooking the world-renowned golf course is the Dune House, designed by architect Julian Guthrie as a retreat for a family with four children. The clients had holidayed in Palm Springs, a city noted for golf, mid-century modern design and a California desert climate—all of which factored into the brief for an expansive yet relaxed house at Tara Iti."

"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."

"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.

"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."

After the home was assembled, a local contractor built the outdoor concrete patio and barbecue on site.

A third of the house and deck cantilever out toward the stream, and the void beneath the deck provides a place for wood storage. The cabin sits just 100 feet from the water, and with the windows open you can hear the ambient rush of the stream from throughout the house.

Lambert & Fils lights are suspended over the island.