Located among grand, expansive neighbours, this modest holiday home by Andrew Meiring Architects had to find confidence and gravitas from smart, sculptural moves.
You arrive at this gated community through a series of dusty, country gravel roads that meander past farms, rolling hills, and endangered wetlands that feed a nearby lake cocooned within the contours of the dunes.
At a T-junction, one is welcomed by the first indications of something slightly out of the ordinary: portions of a black-clad building peep through the hedgeline, hinting at a size and level of comfort quite unlike anything seen on these rural roads.
Te Arai is the most recent, sister property established by the developers of Tara Iti — likely the country’s most exclusive golf-focused gated community — a mere 20 minutes drive north. Although this newer course has a slightly more open-door policy — the links are semi-public and its clubhouse and restaurant are not just for members — the oversized, late-model, luxury SUVs that carpet the parking lot here reflect a somewhat similar patronage.
“The clients were quite unusual,” says Andrew Meiring of the couple who engaged his firm to design this, the first house to be built in this particular community, “in their lack of desire for anything ostentatious or showy.
“People always come in with these grand ideas of what beauty is and what they should be doing with their homes … but [these clients] had none of that. They just wanted something that worked, was beautiful in its own right, and satisfied their spatial requirements.”
The owners’ daughter, Lucy Carter, is a registered architect who worked for Meiring at the time. She was very involved with both bringing the project to the firm and its design and execution.
“They are quite understated,” says Carter, “and just wanted a place where they could go by themselves or bring family, and be by the sea.”
The brief asked for a main and two guest bedrooms, two bathrooms, two outdoor spaces that could be used depending on the wind direction, and “lots of views from the shower!”, according to Carter.
Most of the sites on this development differ from those at Tara Iti in that they are slightly more elevated above the golf course on the beach. This means the main, architectural gestures of any house would be visible to those playing below, and some level of attention had to be paid to this pedestal effect.
“Te Arai is obviously going to be full of big, expensive buildings,” says Meiring, “and, although the sites are quite large and you’re not right next to your neighbour, you are going to be among them. We had to be careful for this little house not to look like someone’s second dwelling. It had to seem big — and that’s not to compete, but purely to hold its own when viewed from the coast.”
This led the architect to design a long, continuous volume with an expressive and sculptural roof as a way to lend the relatively small building a certain gravitas. The roof is also steeply inclined, with the highest point being at the entrance/land-facing side and its lowest on the ocean side. This was done partly to modulate the wind and sun — the house has no artificial heating or cooling — but has also afforded the interior a sort of compacted, horizontal view of the Pacific.
This strong expressive move is complemented by a dramatic dip of the roof at the northernmost end of the house, wrapping a small outdoor patio with triangulated and blocky forms of concrete, timber, and an undeniable degree of beauty.
The dip on the roof was done not only to protect the interior from side winds but also to block the views of the houses that were, eventually, going to be built on the nearby hill. In addition, for anyone sitting in that covered area, the stylised roof frames the views of the Hen and Chickens Islands in the distance.
“It would be nicer to make it even more of a gesture,” says Meiring, confessing that he would have liked this almost wing-like fracture to have been even more pronounced, “but I still think it was really successful.”
And that it is. The roof is held up by thin, rounded pillars that make it seem as if it is floating above the house, and works eloquently with the design.
From the links’ edge, the house presents itself with the level of modesty yet confidence that the designers were after.
The house has been put together — by Todd Farrow from Neo Build — with a set of simple materials that speak to its ‘bachy’ aspirations rather than the flamboyance of the mansions that surround it.
“They’re pretty standard materials,” says Meiring. “Two concrete wind walls and ground base that contain the spaces, rather than just sort of falling onto the land; a big block wood fireplace, which is an important part of the design; a very simple corrugated roof with a bit of structural stuff going on with that [dipping] end piece — then the rest is just a play with various orientations and thicknesses of cedar weatherboard, which the client was very keen would be left to weather.
“The concrete can do what concrete does. The cedar and decks can gray and silver. The stone will get a bit mossy and mouldy, and that was the feel of the house. We just wanted it to weather, and to not be excessive.”
As Te Arai is not connected to the city’s water supply, all rainwater needs to be captured. Meiring saw this as an opportunity to further drive home the design’s rugged soul. Instead of solid downpipes to direct the water into capture tanks, he used metal chains to drive the liquid into concrete pipes raised off the ground.
“The house just needed those little pieces to make it special, kind of honest about how it’s trying to work,” says Meiring.
Carter agrees. “When it’s raining, you can see the water coming down [the chains], and you are more aware of where your water comes from; it’s lovely.”
Inside, the tilted roof allows the house to have both a feeling of generous height (up to 3.2m) and places of compactness (2.4m).
The hallway, capped with clerestory windows at the highest portion of the house, “is one of my favourite spaces,” says Carter. “It’s quite narrow and unexpectedly tall, and the light just flows in.”
The guest bedrooms have been thought out as practical and utilitarian, with the focus being on having guests out, socialising, rather than secluded. The main bedroom has a pivot door — its en suite with the amazing views requested — and the bed’s headrest also functions as a structural component. The guest bathroom is moody and compact, with added rounded edges and touches of flair.
A variety of timbers work in tandem here: plywood on the ceilings, macrocarpa with exposed knots.
“It’s very unpretentious. It’s rough. It’s full of knots and holes and gaps and things like that,” says Meiring. “We wanted to feel relaxed in the house and not feel like you might put a mark there or break something. It’s very user friendly and unfussy but also gives a huge amount of tone and texture, so we’re not relying on a whole lot of fancy architectural detailing. We’re just getting it through materials.”
The owners were never seeking the size or flamboyance of the houses that have now been built around them; this little abode is pared back and relaxed, taking advantage of the natural beauty that surrounds it.
“Mum and Dad are very active,” says Carter, “but there will be a time when they’ll slow down, and you can literally just sit on that deck at the end and see the changing clouds and feel connected to things. It’s quite lovely.”
