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So the brief was pretty simple really; under 50 square meters,
under four meters in height. Client's wanted somewhere that was a bit of a
breakaway for them but they also wanted kind of with the natural beauty of the
place to kind of enable other people to come and share that experience as well.
So right from the start it was always intended for it to be their place as well as everyone else's.
We're in a natural dark sky reserve in Twizel and as part of the luxury escape and retreat
kind of aspect we wanted to really sort of focus in on emphasising the night sky
as well as the daytime sort of beauty of the range and the the distant mountains.
We initially just focused on the basics so somewhere to sleep, somewhere to eat,
somewhere to just sort of relax and soak up views. Obviously there was certain view
planes we wanted to pick up like Backbone Peak, the Ohio range, then obviously we
overlaid that with what the sun was doing and the trajectory during the winter and summer.
It was those kind of cross lines and view planes that really started to set up where the
building needed to sit and it kind of brought itself back to this simple kind of two
rectangles that were slightly skewed. In doing a smaller cabin space we kind of also considered
borrowing the visual space between the two spaces so when you're lying in the bedroom
you see through the living area out to the view.
I often think when you've got all this massive thing to look at you kind of lose the
detail and the scale of the thing.
We kind of use the same sort of protocols I suppose and look to do little defined views
that allowed you to see branches moving on a tree or the cloud kind of dancing across the range.
When you're lying in the bed there's a big window that gets this great big view of the the range
but there's also a little thin window to the side of the bed that allows you just to
see tussock grasses moving. You get to know where you are you get to experience the big
massive expanse of the space but just in these little fragments of time in different
angles and views and elevations and scale.
I love how it sits from the street, you kind of drive along and you just get this kind of
thing sticking up kind of not quite sure is it a building or a shed or
there's some form there but you don't kind of get a clear indication of what it actually is.
You've got the bedroom to your right which has got the ensuite bathroom behind it and
a little laundry so that's the sort of cleaning sleeping spaces then as you sort of come into the
entranceway and turn left you kind of walk through the main living kitchen dining. It's that simply
laid out in effect, it's kind of cleaning and sleeping and eating and relaxing essentially.
Weather is quite severe in this environment. It gets really hot, really cold, really windy,
really dry and I suppose that was the the materiality for the exterior in choosing
the larch was that it was durable, hard wearing. The larch has been designed in
a way where the wall boards follow the roof board so it's a continuous seam.
The interior is lined with beach ply and there's a rib detail
joining the sheets together. We kind of pulled the ply really number of reasons kind of hard wearing,
easy to install and also started pulling some of that kind of external colour palette in;
the sort of tussock grasses and the wild sort of nature of the the ground cover.
The client loves orange so we decided to kind of use it in a very sort of restrained way.
So the exterior was always intended to be a very crisp sharp kind of angular form so we didn't
really want to kind of have it fluttered around with all these gutters and bits and pieces so
we spent a massive amount of time working through very specific detailing to get all the
gutters and the down pipes that are all contained within the cavity of the rain screen.
Skylight over the bed was one of those kind of cool crazy ideas.
The circular skylights I suppose an oversized telescopic view of the night sky.
Talked about having an exterior bath because obviously being in the dark sky reserve
and the amazing landscape it's kind of cool a little special thing
from a luxury retreat perspective to have that outdoor bathing space.
The kind of site really does change every time you come, you know when it's fully laden with snow
it's drastically different and it's I suppose that's the beauty of the apertures and the
windows is that it really focuses you on these aspects of detail of the site,
and I love that you know just sort of seeing a little bit of dusting of snow on the hill or like
you know the trees moving and I like how you can experience it in different ways at different times
every time you come it's never always the same purely because it's so focused on the weather.
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