The Concrete Design Series with PeterFell
The long, low form of the 2025 Coastal Home of the Year appears to emerge from the base of a daunting cliff face at Onetangi on Waiheke Island.
Designed by Herbst Architects, this project was a highly complex undertaking; resource consent alone took five years to obtain. The hurdles were immense, but they resulted in a thing of beauty — not only for the home’s occupants but for the wider community.
“The entire house, by necessity, is concrete. It was determined by the fact that we needed to retain the back wall and the front wall,” architect Lance Herbst explains.
The roof is also concrete — a measure to protect the structure from falling debris in the case of a seismic event.
The material palette of the house developed as a simple trio: board-formed concrete, timber, and a white PeterFell coloured concrete floor meeting suspended coloured concrete tiles in the lanai.
“We’ve counteracted the concrete with timber to create a softness; all the joinery and cabinetry is timber.”
Because the cliff rises immediately behind, the house opens on just one side — to the coast. To mitigate the deep, one-sided face, windows to the sky puncture the roof, and PeterFell SuperWhite Concrete was used for the floor — a measure, Lance says, to “bounce light around the space”.
PeterFell SuperWhite Concrete is manufactured using the whitest cement available in New Zealand, with a superior colour consistency. The PeterFell SuperWhite range uses cement manufactured by Aalborg White, a Danish company that has a reputation for producing the best white cement in the world.
The board-formed concrete used elsewhere in this house was finished with a PeterFell sealer. PeterFell sealers are designed in New Zealand to suit our specific conditions, ensuring a vibrant, smart finish and enduring beauty.
This is a very public site — in arguably one of the busiest parts of the island — and this sculptural intervention is a visionary addition to the streetscape; an object of art forged in concrete and timber.
Images: Jackie Meiring
PeterFell SuperWhite Concrete provides a vibrant white finish for interior and exterior spaces. It is part of a wider white range, which includes SuperWhite Plus — an even brighter white.
