Selected Project
Hekerua Bay Residence
The site slopes north-east above a rocky cove on Waiheke island. The aspect from the site is across a bay and reef to a golden sand cove opposite. The house is a collaboration with the client, an engineer with meticulous attention to detail, who owns a winery on the island. His sensibility for materials is directed by his Cypriot heritage and the sensory experiences founded in hospitality. His brief was a single line instruction to enhance the experience of the occupants. As a structural engineer he has a love of concrete and in situ concrete was defined as the core material of the structure. The client sourced travertine, remembered from his childhood, that exactly matched the colour of the beach across the bay and the clay coloured sandstone of nearby island cliffs. The curved concrete forms resonate with the gun emplacements that dot the isthmus – rudimentary, part buried, part exposed, strongly anchored, partly projecting from the land. From these four posits – a specific material sensibility, an engineered concrete shell structure, the unrelentingly inclined topography of the place and the forms of the concrete buildings nearby – the house emerged. The site is rebuilt as a series of platforms for living, aligned with the oblique contour, with a cubist pool of water part embedded, part exposed on the west edge. The master suite, the reading room, a second guest suite and a studio are suspended above these platforms and between them create a stage for human interaction. This stage opens and closes to the exterior entirely, combining with the terraces and pool to create a sculptural surface bridging inside and out. The east and west elevations clearly articulate the separation between site and superstructure and the single continuous line that traverses the outer edges of the concrete shells.
- Category
- Residential Architecture - Houses
- Location
- Auckland
- Year
- 2006
