Waikanae House / Parsonson Architects

Architects: Parsonson Architects Ltd
Location: Waikanae, Kapiti Coast, New Zealand
Completed: 2010
Design Team: Gerald Parsonson, Andrew Simpson
Structural Engineers: Spencer Holmes Ltd
Builder: Stratum
Photographers: Paul Mcredie

The house is in Waikanae, a small verdant sea side town on the Kapiti Coast 45 minutes north of New Zealand’s capital city Wellington. It is in the old beach area of Waikanae where many of the houses are holiday homes or ‘baches’ built from the early 1900’s onwards.

This house is a holiday retreat for a Wellington couple and their 3 children. The site is a narrow strip, which sits behind a high fore-dune towards the beach. The house is designed as a ‘dune hopper’ with the single open-plan living space sitting on top of the bedrooms andpeers out to the sea and Kapiti Island beyond. The house references the fibrolite sheet construction used in many of the 1950’s houses nearby with colours drawn from the seaside location.