Our Project
Create Your Dream House
We are a team of highly creative individuals offering Immersive visualization solutions for architects and real estate developers globally.
Client Brief
Our task was to create a contemporary single-story holiday home with three bedrooms, featuring a long and low design that blends into the rural landscape of Central Otago.
The client was fond of the prairie style of architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright and the interior design of Tom Kundig, and requested that it be incorporated into the design concept, but was also open to the option of a collection of interconnected pavilions with gabled roofs, similar to a previous project we designed.
The house was to be situated with an access road and a spacious lawn to the north for outdoor activities. The client wanted a functional and adaptable holiday home for indoor and outdoor entertaining with family and friends. The design emphasized large amounts of glass, extended roof overhangs, and varying wall heights to maximize views, daylight, control sunlight, ensure privacy, and reduce wind exposure.
The main bedroom suite was to be positioned apart from the other bedrooms, with a versatile space that could be used as a games room, bedroom, or garage, and closed off when the client was using the holiday home alone. The client requested a double garage, laundry, bathroom, snug, service area, and hot tub, all positioned to preserve the main views to the north and south.
The goal was to design a relaxed holiday home with an architecture that would endure, utilizing low-maintenance, durable materials and high-quality finishes, colors, and textures that would harmoniously blend with the rural landscape of Central Otago.
Earth from the Moon
The design features long, linear forms that appear as horizontal lines in the surroundings. With a robust and cohesive materiality, and balanced geometry, it is a custom-made contemporary holiday home. The open-plan layout emphasizes indoor-outdoor flow and ample daylight penetration, achieved through high-level glazing.
This results in light-filled, airy spaces with heightened views of mountain range skylines. Northern and Southern courtyards are situated between the bedroom pavilions to offer panoramic views of the surrounding landscape and a strong visual axis through the central living area.
The Southern courtyard serve as the main entry and exit and provide an alternate outdoor living space protected from wind. Earthy colors, textures, and materials are employed to create a strong connection between the building and its natural surroundings. Cedar, shuttered concrete, polished concrete, and corten steel are integrated into the design, along with extensive double glazing.
Inspiration from Tom Kundig provides a rustic country rawness to the architecture and interiors that reflects the rugged Central Otago mountains with a durability to be resilient to harsh seasonal weather. The cedar cladding and floating linear forms created by horizontal lines of extending roofs, open plan living, and horizontal bands of windows reference the prairie architecture style to blend with the flat open countryside.
Large roof overhangs, passive solar design, use of thermal mass, high insulation in the thermal envelope, double glazing, LED lighting, and low-maintenance, durable materials contribute to a sustainable life cycle in terms of design, construction, and environmental impact.