Taking an innovative approach to custom home design

Designed by Tom Rowe, Rowe Baetens Architecture

From the architect:

·       The home takes advantage of sea views immediately east, affectionally known by local Maori as the "Waka superhighway" of Auckland.

·       This was an historic route for canoes, enabling travel between the Manukau and Waitamata harbours.

·       A park over the road to the north with large established trees has been captured as a “borrowed” landscape to make the house feel as though it extends to a much larger territory.

·       Following an "L" shape plan, the plan is oriented to create a courtyard facing the sea. This provides protection from the sun and winds as well as privacy from the adjacent park.

·       Anchored by two precast textured concrete “boxes”, a long drifting pavilion roof form glides above the cedar and concrete walls. Functionally, the pavilion roof extends beyond the concrete boxes, protecting a glazed living room pavilion open to the north, south and east. The same roof returns to the south to include bedrooms facing east to a lawn and inner garden.

·       A tapered forced perspective view between concrete boxes narrows to a deliberately codified entry threshold.

·       Concrete board textured panels wrap from the outside to return inside and embrace cabinetry.

·       Sustainable principles have been utilised, taking advantage of thermal mass in the concrete panels, using high specification insulation and incorporating technologically advanced underfloor heating and solar photovoltaic panels.

·       The challenge was to work within a strict budget to create a distinctive, individual house that responds sensitively to the landscape of the site, the park and the horizon of the sea. We did this by using a combination of commercial construction methods such as precast concrete panels

·       As well as “group building” techniques, rib-raft flooring and trusses were used but inverted and skewed asymmetrically. This construction methodology takes advantage of the structural efficiencies of truss design while also providing deep eaves and weather protection.

·       Materiality was selected for durability and texture: bandsawn cedar rusticated weatherboards with oil finish, reinforce the horizontality of the building; dark oxide coloured concrete with rough board texture, also horizontal.

·       The house is single level and designed as a retirement house incorporating principles of accessible design.

Story by: Trendsideas

Photography by: Samuel Hartnett