This is a house for an extraordinary couple you know they're aspirational and they're humble
and I guess those are two words that we thought about a lot when we were designing this house.
The location is this extraordinary spot on the Eastern side of the Coromandel,
aspects out to the Mercury Islands, Great Barrier, islands that were named by Captain James Cook
in 1769 so a lot of early European history but also a lot of Maori history around here as well.
The site is an extraordinary site there's a plateau just above the dunes and it's got
expansive views to the north and west, you actually have access from the south
which is kind of cool because the way we like to kind of think about design is that
it's like a book that you unfold as you go through chapter by chapter so by coming in
from the south at a lower level you get no connection with the view you have no idea
what's on top of the dune and so the journey is kind of very carefully choreographed,
you walk up through a little landscape courtyard to the front door the main pod
which is the kitchen, dining, living area and the main bedroom and then the children's pod.
There's a very interesting gold mining history that was one of the inspirations for the home
design we found this extraordinary drawing of the old gold mine shafts and so we actually
reinterpreted that and actually put a series of diagonals into what's really
quite a horizontal building but we wanted a home that actually kind of had a bit of
scale that related to the scale of the landscape and so the idea of these kind of light shafts,
light mines that we call them, kind of was an idea that actually we talked to
the clients about and after a lot of negotiation they embraced them
and one of the nice things that these shafts do is they talk to you about the time of day or night,
there's this constant movement of the sun coming down through the shafts that animates the space.
We placed them strategically in the plan over important areas of the house,
the dining room, the living room and of course the main bedroom
and the one over the main bed is an extraordinary thing because it actually kind of mines the light
at night as well so you see the Milky Way, the stars and again it's constantly moving.
Materially it was important that it actually tied into the context where it sits on the landscape,
we wanted a building that kind of talked to the colours outside,
the sand on the beach, the rocks on the headland.
This particular rainscreen is really interesting we found an old stand of
cultura trees that were dead and so we had them milled and then put on the building as a cladding
and what we wanted is this kind of horizontality so there's a big strong horizontal shadow line
unlike normal weatherboards which is quite fine, we wanted to actually reinforce this
horizontality which may talk to the way you shored up an old gold mine.
Homes in these sensitive locations
have to meld and blend in over time, I think it's important that we respect the context that they
sit in and so natural materials shadow lines help them blend in so the interior is really
important as well we wanted something that was super soft, as a look, that contrasted their
urban house. This lining is hemlock which is actually band sawed and slightly stained.
Our client was a retired builder and the team that he had employed to actually build it were
extraordinary craftspeople and you kind of look around and you kind of see how it goes together
the wall linings are all mitred and that's the detail that our client
actually brought to the project all of the boards line through
with the wall lining and the doors it's an extraordinary example of craft at its best.
So the kitchen too is one of those internal spaces which is dark and
again a reference to perhaps the interior of a gold mine.
Designing a home for this humble yet aspirational couple was a little bit
of a challenge we like our architecture to be a little bit played back but also memorable
and I think the light shafts, the light mines, played into that idea really neatly.
I think it was Louis Khan said that "a brick doesn't know how good it is until the light
shines on it" and we love the idea that kind of there's lots of variations to the light quality
in here from opening corners from overhang doors and of course the light mines and it and it tells
the story of the day, morning sun coming in low, midday sun excluded in the summertime,
winter sun coming in the afternoon as well, low horizontal and extraordinarily exciting.