Auckland

This new home in Campbell’s Bay is built to the rear of a natural creek. Surrounded by native bush, views to the beautiful surroundings are thoughtfully framed from each internal space. Exterior materials were carefully selected to allow the home to settle gently into the tranquil, native bush surroundings, while the use of timber features across the interior spaces speak to the outside environment. To the exterior, soft grey vertical cedar contrasts with a light clay-toned brick cladding, and is grounded by dark plaster render. Vertical timber screens to the entry and outdoor spaces elongate the façades upwards while serving practical purposes through shading weather and increasing privacy. The home is designed in an ‘L’ shaped floor plan,... More

This new home in Campbell’s Bay is built in front of a natural creek, framed by native bush. Exterior materials were carefully selected to allow the home to settle gently into the tranquil native bush surroundings, while the use of timber features across the interior spaces speak to the outside environment. To the exterior, soft grey vertical cedar contrasts with a light clay-toned brick cladding, and is grounded by dark plaster render. Vertical timber screens to the entry and outdoor spaces elongate the façades upwards while serving practical purposes through shading weather and increasing privacy. The home is designed in a ‘U’ shaped floor plan around an open central courtyard, allowing natural light to permeate the interior spaces while... More

The initiative arises from the need to connect on the basis of a bridge or a series of them the great barrier island with the neighboring islands of the Hauraki Gulf.This proposal on the contrary seeks primarily to create the necessary means to contribute to the regeneration of an aquatic ecosystem belonging to the marine park of the Hauraki Gulf which has been significantly affected over time due to pollution and overfishing altering in this way the existing trophic and environmental system. That is why the interrelation between the gulf, its islands and basins is necessary to maintain the vital support of the environment which is a matter of national importance, besides that the marine park of the Hauraki Gulf is clearly different from ot... More

This new home in Whangaparaoa is nestled amongst the branches of protected Pohutukawa, looking through greenery to the Wade River as it flows into Arkles Bay. The brief for this project involved a new four bedroom home, with complete privacy from the street and maximum views over the water.Fulfilling this purpose, vertical metal cladding wraps up and over an enigmatic angular form that sits close to a cliff edge. From the street, glimpses of glazing, living areas, vertical cedar cladding and low-maintenance bagged masonry can be seen from oblique angles. However, the visual impact of the metal cladding cutting through the centre of the site draws the eye, and provides a sense of the mysterious.To the rear of the site, façades are softened w... More

This house is located on a narrow urban site in the heart of Herne Bay. Tight site controls and a sloping site resulted in a long narrow building form that steps down the slope of the site. One of the main features of the house is the entry which is reached by a bridge that crosses a moat of planting. The entry is glazed with translucent glass to give privacy and a beautiful soft light to the interior spaces. The entry space is protected by a vertical cedar screen with intermittent horizontals painted with colours that have also been used on the interior and inspired by the clients’ fantastic collection of 1950 -60s furniture, art and ceramics. Once inside an open riser jarrah and steel stair with a hanging screen of stainless steel m... More

Colin McCahon was one of New Zealands premier 20th century painters. This artist's residency is located on the site adjacent to the cottage in which the McCahon family lived with his family and painted during a seminal period of his career in the 1950's. It accommodates national and international recipients of scholarships and operates in conjunction with a museum in the original cottage. The new building is designed in two parts, one containing the studio and the other the residence. Its complex form is carefully designed to sit between the many trees (mainly kauri) on the site, which are especially significant given the role they played in the paintings McCahon produced in his shift towards abstraction. The residence nestles against th... More

A relatively mundane set of requirements has been transformed into an exciting and vibrant treehouse. A one room space serves as bedroom, workroom and rumpus area, with a separate small bedroom in the concrete masonry tower. The red box ‘floats’ above the boat space, and is nestled amongst the branches of the existing pohutukawa. Squeezed between the sea and a steep cliff, the extension reads as a floating red cube relating to the existing and grounded yellow bach. Clad in extruded aluminum weatherboards, the cube has a crispness of form and colour, which could overpower the bay and neighbours if not for the fact that it is recessed behind the large pohutukawa boughs, creating the feeling of a tree-house from inside. The red reflects th... More

This office fitout for a barrister is on the upper level of a building designed by the New York office of Welton Becket and Associates in 1968. Large picture windows provided a light filled existing space in which the desire was to create an elegant and understated environment. A landscape painting by Stanley Palmer purchased early on in the project by the client, informed the material and colour palette. Walls are lined with honey coloured European Ash panelling and a back lit panel of onyx provides a warm glow to the entry space. On the floor is a silk weave carpet which reads like an aerial view of crop fields with random strips of gold in the same shade as the leaves of the Ginkgo Biloba tree outside. Frameless glass to the boardr... More

This extension to the NZ Maritime Museum is designed to house an exhibition of New Zealand yachting, from early small boats through to NZL32, which first won the America's Cup for this country. NZL32 was gifted to Te Papa, and is now exhibited as a collaboration between Voyager and Te Papa. The alteration expands the building outwards and upwards, in a series of planes which explode the traditional form of the sheds. To the east an extension pushes over the sea, housing a series of beautiful yachts portraying the history of New Zealand small boat sailing. NZL32 is suspended within the main space, within an exhibition entitled 'Blue Water Black Magic', a tribute to the life of Sir Peter Blake and to many aspects of small yacht and off... More

A three bedroom house designed for a small and near-impossible site! Five well established pohutukawa inhabit the site, with intertwined limbs spread across the seaward half of the available building zone. A tight access lane drops from Minnehaha Ave at a very steep 1:3 slope. Much of the site is volcanic rock. The desire not to damage the trees or their extensive root systems, combined with the steep slope and limited turning circle for cars, the rock outcrops, and the restrictions of height-to-boundary controls necessitated a process of complex analysis to formulate the actual possibilities for building. The result is an innovative building which and is squeezed under, around and between the limbs of the trees, and still manages to ta... More