Bossley architects

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

On an island in the Bay of Islands, four separate buildings discretely occupy an east-facing bay. The houses are light pavilions which promote the concept of 'roof' as the predominant element of shelter. The monopitch roofs float above and beyond the spaces, supported on exo-skeletal structures beautifully detailed in wood. Exterior walls are taut joinery frames, offering minimal interruption between inside and out. The boatshed is totally underground, to reduce visual built form in the bay, with the guesthouse above. The house has frequently been published internationally and has achieved what the Monument journal from Australia described as near 'mythic status'. 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

We were engaged by the new owners of the well known but well worn hotel to rejuvenate it with a distinctly New Zealand flavour. Given the remote location and the fragility of the visitor numbers in the off-season, the hotel was to be redeveloped over a number of stages with clearly defined budgets for each stage. The dark and sombre timber lined interiors were stripped and replaced with light filled spaces, with the heritage aspects preserved where appropriate. Details were designed to allow implementation by existing hotel staff where possible, and with the difficulties of restricted access in mind. Working in conjunction with Penny Vernon, we refurbished the main public spaces, the Foyer, Lounges, Dining Room and Bar, and many of... More

At just 50 square metres, this bite-sized holiday accommodation is one of our smallest projects to date. Situated on a orchard in the picturesque country side of the Hawkes bay this small pavilion responds to the design of the neighboring house, by John Scott. The large deck and monopitch roof create a conversation with Scott’s design, whilst the accents of yellow add a bright new dimension. A simple construction orientated to be open to the sun, and surrounding natural environment. It is primarily visitor accommodation, so wheelchair access has been seamlessly incorporated into the design. 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