Arrowtown House featured in Habitus Living Magazine
20/04/2011
Habitus Living has featured a Noel Lane Architects property on which Holmes Consulting Group has consulted. The article is reprinted with permission below.
Andrea Stevens is the writer, Simon Devitt, the photographer.
On a clear day, flying over the Southern Alps offers a surreal view into a craggy milky wilderness. This chiaroscuro landscape of glaciated valleys and snowy peaks traces the length of the South Island and the alpine fault. Alluvial planes fall toward the east coast and out of sight, peaks plummet into the west coast rainforest. Shades of white eventually give way to rivers, inland lakes and a mosaic of fields.
I have reached the old gold-mining settlement of Queenstown, a remote yet international destination for avid climbers, skiers and scenic tourists. It’s another world for this North Islander, more accustomed to the semi-tropical north.
Mountains loom on all sides. It is dry, golden and clear. Otago stone makes the buildings foreign, and the wines are as dry as the climate. An almost Nordic atmosphere is tinged with English picturesque by the liquid amber and lakeside Willow.
I have come to see a new house by Noel Lane, twenty minutes drive toward historic Arrowtown.
The road arcs north-east, over the Shotover River and below Coronet Peak. On approach to Lake Hayes, we branch off the main road and on to gravel, to reach a subtle stone and Cedar house. Low and wide, nesting on the brow of a hill, it reflects the materials and colours of the landscape.
It looks like a local, until I see its vaulted copper roof. Lane always does something different with a roof. It is his fifth elevation, and this one is special.
From the gravel driveway, a garden wall signals entry through a passage and into a glazed lobby. Rather than being taken ‘inside’, we’re now on the edge of a 14m2 open courtyard. A pathway leads through it to the living space, or we can circle the courtyard via a glazed gallery. The architect has brought the landscape inside, and in so doing inverted the typical New Zealand house plan. Two interlocking pavilions now form the ‘verandah’ for living, encircling a void.
“There is a very strong relationship to the land – to the mountains, lake and plain below,” says Lane. “The view is south to Lake Hayes, but there is also a strong southerly wind. The idea was to create shelter and be able to go outdoors, but maintain the views and family connections.”
Plan dimensions and roof pitch were carefully calculated to maximise the sun and view, and minimise the presence of house structure. At the same time, in a climate as cold as this, there was a need for solidity and warmth. The architect has skilfully navigated the two, and created a house that is contained yet open, anchored yet light, practical for the dry summer heat and the wet winter chills.
The courtyard reminds me of the internal double-height void in Lane’s own house (Habitus 05). As a spatial and social pivot, communal family life is connected visually and acoustically. Kitchen, living and children’s areas circle the void, separated but also united within a large footprint.
This sense of community is repeated here, and reinforced by the building’s materiality – its careful and consistent detail unites the whole. “The entire house has the same identity, the same simple palette of materials,” project architect Tom Rowe points out. “It is very restrained, but very rich in texture.” Flamed granite, local schist and glazed or painted white walls quietly contain the interior space. It also defers to the heroic landscape in material and form.
One of the most striking things I see in this house is its Japanese influence. Lane worked on and off in Japan over a seven year period. He built several houses, a studio and studied the culture and art. It is not a conscious thing according to the architect, yet the deep eaves, copper roof, and horizontal proportioning are incredibly evocative. The courtyard, too – with its water, stone and plants – is a poetic miniaturisation of the landscape. And indeed the climate here is not dissimilar to parts of Japan.
Every house has a period of gestation, and the design process for this one was a four-year, long distance conversation between architect and client – a Swedish national. He bought the land while on holiday, drawn by its natural beauty and similarity to his homeland. Lane had a similar affinity with the landscape, and so he was commissioned to create a permanent family residence.
They quickly worked out how they would communicate between Lane’s Auckland office and the owner’s many countries of work. “He was inquisitive and thoughtful, and we’ve had a very good dialogue right through,” says Lane. “I suggested he tear out pages of buildings he was attracted to from books and magazines, and photograph places he liked.” “He did this while he travelled, so we had huge number of images from all around the world. I grouped the pages into common themes, and found the same spatial idea recurring. Even though he’d grown up in an alpine environment, he never showed me a building with small windows. He once said this process taught him to really look at his surrounds and not just pass through.”
This dialogue between client and architect included joint trips to Queenstown and Arrowtown to look at materials. When they found stone walls they liked, they visited the quarries and spoke to the stone smiths who built them. The attention to detail was intense, and the client became more and more specific as time went on. “If you use natural materials, select them carefully and place them without fuss, you get very beautiful results,” Lane asserts. “A minimalism in detailing leads to a fullness in materiality.”
Like early Modernist pavilions – Mies’ Farnsworth House and Johnson’s Glass House – this house also seeks an immersion in nature. By necessity, it has more solidity – it is a family home after all and is responsive to vernacular materials. However, by combining these, it has achieved a poetic connection with the landscape, and is literally permeated by it.
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