This video is brought to you by 10, our debut hard cover book celebrating
10 issues of The Local Project, use the code BOOK5 at checkout for a 5% discount.
Mawhiti is located on the western shores of Waiheke Island which is in the Hauraki
Gulf just off the coast of Auckland which which is the largest city of New Zealand,
it's an idilic place a kind of a paradise, only a half an hour ferry trip from the city.
The house was designed for two sisters who found this extraordinary piece of land looking out onto
the the gulf and towards Rangitoto and their idea really was to create a visitor experience which
was unique something that had a real character of New Zealand about it and something that
wasn't really available when they looked around for places to to rent or stay. Mawhiti is the
Maori language word for 'escape' and that's very much what the essence of this house is,
we call it a holiday retreat but it's really a place of restoration and rejuvenation,
it's about creating a kind of a calmness in your life but also has an uplifting quality.
It's an expansive site on the west coast of Waiheke, it's got native bush and the gullies
down each side, mature pōhutukawa trees along the edge and where the house itself is situated is on
a promontory just above the beach. The form of the house evokes the Maori Meeting House,
the Whare and that's open porch on the front and that idea of welcome, of hospitality that that
that engenders was very important to us, the other main influence on the design was this idea of the
rural barn, you could say generic or archetypal gable form of the landscape, we're trying to
combine these two ideas, the barn with its utility with its unpretentiousness, it's corrugated iron
roof but also the idea of the Whare which has a sort of deep spirit of place and these are the
things that we're trying to bring to this design. The gateway pavilion actually has a very
interesting backstory, probably 14 years ago we designed it to be the New Zealand entry for the
Venice Architecture Biennale and the idea was to make a building out of timber from New Zealand
and transport it back to Venice, the ancient stone city, something from the new world going
to the old world and we wanted to do something innovative with timber so we created this building
which is all made of straight pieces of pine but it actually has an intensely sculptural effect and
creates quite an extraordinary experience when you actually move through the building, it starts at
one end with the form of the iconic Whare and the building morphs as you move through it into a kind
of free form organic sculpture of triangulated geometries and and fanning ribs and so of almost
becomes something like from the landscape and then it returns again to the Whare form at the
other end and the idea is that the house was in conversation with that building, it had a
lot of common elements, it had the triangulated geometry it had the sculptural effect, it had
the materiality of the timber and it was sort of articulated in that same sort of angular fashion.
We wanted both of these structures to feel that they really belonged in the landscape that they
were empathetic to the landscape so you might see with the house that it's broken into
three different Pavilions and they radiate out across the site and this follows the contour and
creates the sort of sense that the the building fits the landscape and it also creates these
really interesting areas between these pavilions which you'll see we've utilised to create these
micro courtyards off the bathrooms. One of the bathrooms opens onto a larger courtyard and in
that courtyard is a big copper tub, it's sort of like a Japanese style bath where you're sitting
in a quite an upright way and at sunset it is really extraordinary to sit on that
steaming water and be exposed to such an extraordinary view. We wanted the building to
have a soulful feel, we wanted it to have a kind of an earthy tactility, about it we did not want
it to be slick or shiny, we really wanted to have this this more earthy effect which
gave you a sense of calm and a sense of sort of getting back to something more basic, this is
born out of the materiality of the interior the burnished concrete floors left plain,
the pine ceilings and linings on the walls which are just oiled with with a pale white oil we
just wanted to leave things natural and a little bit raw. I'm proud of the way the
building sits in the landscape in a way which is both bold but also very empathetic, we were
trying to create a distinctive New Zealand experience with this house that people from
around New Zealand or overseas could experience and it feels like we've done that, it really has
this uplifting almost spiritual vibe to it and the people who stay here really attest to that.
This video is brought to you by 10, our debut hard cover book celebrating 10 issues of The
Local Project. 10 unites the very best projects from the first 10 issues of the publication into
a beautiful single volume with over 400 pages of architecture and design from both leading
and emerging creatives, the hard cover book takes readers on a curated and meditative
journey. The premium Paper Stock of the book means 10 is an enduring addition to a coffee
table or library to be enjoyed for years to come with worldwide delivery available have
10 delivered directly to your door. Head to the link in the video description to
purchase your copy now and use the code BOOK5 at checkout for a 5% discount.