In Wānaka, this holiday home’s interior by Strutt Studios relies on a touch of Bauhaus and a lot of bravery for a refreshing and forward-thinking design.
The architecture of this Wānaka house — a collaboration between the owner and interior designer Sophie Bowers (director of Sydney-based Strutt Studios), Intuitive Architects, and Owens Builders — is composed of three interconnected volumes, each responding to natural light, aspect, and function. It is clad in Lichen COLORSTEEL corrugate, blending agricultural references with modern execution.
A gabled pavilion — connected through an entry hall — contains the open-plan living area, two guest bedrooms, and a mezzanine while a separate volume houses the main bedroom suite. The proportions of the windows on the soft green façade offer moments of beauty: a small elongated slit with an eyebrow onto the public road, a large, corner picture window left frameless to take in the alpine context.
“Originally, there was going to be a mullion on that joint, given that it is such a structurally intensive piece,” says Sophie, “but my husband Josh insisted that we needed to budget engineer other parts of the house, to get that completely frameless, no mullion,” she says of the one-tonne piece of glazing. “Thank God, he insisted … it is one of the absolute heroes, both interior and exterior,” she continues.
Another exceptional move is a little balcony, cut into the roofline, that offers a private spot for reading, yoga, stargazing, or sharing a drink. It is an unexpected cutout on the gable that offers an interesting break on the rhythm of the corrugate.
It is, however, the interior where this abode shines in more ways than one, and which impressed this year’s Home Interior of the Year judges. Firstly, there is the daring choice of strand board as the main internal cladding. Oriented Stand Board (OSB) was engineered in the resource-scarce, post-war America as a way to use timber waste on construction surfaces not intended for the public gaze. It is not a material widely used for its aesthetic properties and it is normally plastered and painted, hiding its mosaic-like properties.
“We knew from the beginning that if we didn’t treat [OSB] with a really sophisticated detail, there was a risk that it would look quite rural or commercial,” says Sophie.
Strand board can often come with a rather yellowish, sometimes orange tinge due both to its raw (usually yellow pine) material and the glues used to keep the thing together. “So … we had to desaturate it,” says the designer, “there was a lot of trial and error with testing different shades of white into a polyurethane mix. We ended up with a 20-part polyurethane to a one-part, slightly beige-toned Dulux white.”
There is also the issue of the edging of OSB being brittle and prone to chipping. The team routed every single edge to ensure a smooth 2mm shadowline between each board and used invisible fixings to attach it to walls and ceilings. Once this backdrop had been sufficiently elevated, it was time for some bling.
“Tumbled brass in all of the joinery handles; the super high gloss brown tiles in the bathroom, a lot of those ’70s nostalgia elements in the green …” Sophie listed some of the elements that helped create “the right kind of balance for the OSB to look sophisticated in its own sense.”
To complement the strongly textured personality of the engineered timber, the designers brought together an impressive number of surfaces and materials, lighting pieces and furnishings that popped rather than blended. The technique ensures the eye goes toward the details and that juxtaposition of the highly crafted against the industrial creates a tension that works beautifully here. It is about every object acting as a small, but succinct focal point with a strong design personality to elicit a pause and a moment of joy or calm. Something as simple as the clothes hanging rails have been highly considered and are made up of handcrafted, Italian leather straps that wrap around matt black-stained timber dowels.
Tiles handcrafted using ancient Japanese traditions adorn bathrooms and other surfaces around the home, even towel hangers favour expressiveness over mere utilitarianism.
With all these different shapes and colours, and textures, was there any moment of doubt, of wanting to pare back? Sophie: “It felt like a really organic design process, given that we had such a clear vision from the start. Not only had the interior detailing been resolved from the very beginning but I knew that I wanted tile plinths in the bathrooms. I knew that I wanted a big feature base and pedestals. We knew that we wanted tile desk nooks in the bedrooms and banquet seats underneath all of the windows. So … having a lot of those large forms dictated the rest of the design decisions from the outset. But yes, there were definitely quite a few times where I could collapse in a heap on the kitchen floor and Josh would have to say: ‘Stop second-guessing yourself, trust your vision!’”
Scout is a home composed in dialogue with the alpine landscape, and the peculiar light such a context entails was also a critical component to its success.
Windows — including the impressive frameless one in the home’s sunken living room — frame mountains and skies, inviting a rhythm of sun by day and stars by night.
Skylights have been used in the main bedroom (right above the head of the bed as a stargazing slot), and around bathrooms.
The richness of sunlight diffusing on the OSB creates a beautiful touch on this textural interior while a restrained, tactile palette inspired by Wānaka — muted greens, earthy browns, and golden hues — shifts with the light.
Lighting design complements this with a variety of fittings that represent a who’s who of New Zealand’s increasingly exciting industrial design scene: Nightworks, Snelling, and South Drawn, the Melbourne-based studio of Dunedin brothers Luke and Christian Mills. “I think the lighting for me had to be the jewellery throughout the space. And working with New Zealand lighting designers was important,” says Sophie.
Every piece is different and each boasts a strong graphic element. Pleats and folds, asymmetry and lots of curves. It calls upon the juxtapositions of maximalism, but does so upon a more restrained backdrop, accomplishing a balance that, for a less capable designer, could have tipped either way: into excess or clash.
When asked about her background and the influences that allowed for this space to flourish, Sophie mentions an influential trip around Europe in her 20s, which introduced her to German and Danish design. “I am, personally, a little bit averse to colour,” she confesses, “my nickname is Sophie ‘Beige’ Bowers because my wardrobe is 50 different shades of beige! … but when I design a space they end up with these wild colours. I think that does come from this background of falling in love with the greats, like the Bauhaus movement and how they do inject very jarring pops of colour throughout different spaces, but in a minimalistic style.”
This home rose to the fore in several categories at the Home Interior of the Year Awards as an amalgamation of materials and textures, colours and shapes that come across as delightful and fresh while at the same time echoing the brittle, tanned and alluring nature of its alpine context.
Words: Federico Monsalve
Images: Mickey Ross
Judges’ citation
A contemporary alpine retreat that embodies a quiet dialogue between architecture, landscape, and lived experience. Conceived without a set brief, the project is an instinctive response to place — balancing bold, elemental materials with an atmosphere of intimacy and restraint. Artisanal and textural, every touchpoint of this home’s interior has been treated like a small jewel. Strutt Studios demonstrates a commitment to material honesty, regional makers, and the emotional resonance of place. Scout is a residence that is at once durable and intensely forward looking: a considered framework for slow living, attuned to light, seasonality, and the enduring textures of its alpine landscape.
