Waiatarua House / Hamish Monk Architecture

Architects: Hamish Monk Architecture
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Contractor: McGillivray Builders
Sub Consultants: Assemble ltd
Structural Engineer: Blueprint Consulting Engineers
Geotechnical Engineer: Engineering Design Consultants
Area: 225 sqm
Year: 2012
Photographs: Mark Smith

The brief was for a new house on a challenging, steep site in the Orakei creek gully. One of the design challenges was to insert a bold (in size and placement) intervention into a sensitive bush reserve whilst still maintaining a sense of modesty and poetic. The desire was to seek out a quiet architectural expression, one that is devoid of excessive articulation and noise; a silent witness to its surroundings.

Conceived as sculptural components the design plays on purity and scale of the program articulated through three simple elemental forms that step down the site towards the creek – the roof of one floor creating a level platform for the next.

From the point of entry the house offers a range of spatial experiences across the width of the floorplate; transitioning from a hunkered almost subterranean position in the landscape to an elevated position perched in the tree canopy.