There’s a little hill range about seven kilometres down the road from Kemureti Cambridge. Mere minutes from town, the landscape tips over into countryside, covered with sheep farms, lifestyle blocks and bush. Tucked into the saddle of the rolling pass are two shallow-pitched rectangular forms. From afar, the corrugate-topped buildings could be mistaken for a couple of sheds. But perspective is a cunning thing and, as you veer off the main road and up the gravel driveway, their slick, timber-clad profiles come into focus: a house on a hill and a garage below.
With just three windows along the façade, the house has a simple, cabin-like quality. But as you park outside the garage and walk up the hill towards it, the home seems to expand. “There are more rooms than windows on the front side, and the middle window is oversized, which gives the illusion that the house is smaller than it is,” explains architect Christopher Beer. “It’s this playful thing where you expect one thing but get something quite different.”
The rural home is, in a word, beautiful. The owners had lived in villas across Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Cambridge for years but were tired of the formality and maintenance; they were ready to break the pattern with a unique new-build. Although development and subdivisions are rife in the area, they hadn’t seen anything that resonated, so after buying this quiet 4600-square-metre plot, they reached out to Beer. “We were on the same page straight away; we liked and disliked all the same things,” he remembers. “What’s being built in the area at the moment is quite generic. They didn’t want that, and neither did I.”
The initial design response centred around near, intermediate and far views, with the house and its openings orientated to capture those unique aspects – and the sunlight. Keen to incorporate the high ceilings they’d become accustomed to in their villas, the couple wanted to enhance that volume with a restrained, natural palette. “The idea for the home was simple, calm and minimalist, but rich,” explains the architect. A separate garage was also on the agenda. “So then it became about the relationship between those two forms.”
The architect stepped the two buildings up the gentle slope, orienting the home towards the “far” view out to Kirikiriroa Hamilton, Pirongia and Whāingaroa Raglan beyond. With shed-like proportions and metal roofs, the design suits its rural location, touching down lightly on the land. Pale Abodo timber cladding follows the site’s mild incline so the back of the house sits almost level with the grass while the front hovers about a metre above it. “On our first site visit, we arrived at a paddock covered with long grass, and the clients said, ‘This is great, let’s keep this,’” remembers Beer. “They’d spent enough time with manicured hedges, so they wanted it to sit within wild grass, vegetable gardens and fruit trees.”
Inside, the layout is straightforward – bedrooms, living, bathroom and laundry down one end, with the kitchen, dining and snug at the other – but Beer has toyed with scale and separation. Subspaces are lightly marked out by strategically placed furniture, joinery and partial walls, like the tall bank of cabinets that separate the dining room and kitchen. Deep-brown textured units hide integrated fridges and stop short of the ceiling to exaggerate the home’s three-metre stud. The arrangement retains an open-plan feel but gives each zone a purposeful role. A floating wall divides the dining space and snug, with a wide opening on one side and a narrow passage on the other that grandchildren can squeeze through out to the deck. The interior has an appealing simplicity; its concrete floor, muted tones, oiled oak joinery, and stone bench make for a tactile and rich finish.
Rather than stitching decks onto the front or side of the home, Beer took a more insular approach to counter the exposed nature of the site. He carved the deck and front porch into its footprint, closing them off to the elements but keeping them open to views. “It’s this intermediate zone. You’re protected, you’re sheltered, not inside or outside,” he explains. They’re cave-like, with deep-brown timber and a solid overhang. The wood is actually the same profile as the cladding, but reads as a different material as it’s hidden from the rain and sun underneath these chunky recesses and hasn’t silvered off to the same extent.
The owners weren’t looking for a big, wide opening to the outdoors, but they did want the view. For that reason, the glazing between the kitchen and sheltered deck is mostly fixed, with one sliding panel. Beer has taken great pains in framing the scenery, using windows sparingly and to great effect. The bedrooms have small openings to the near views back up the hill that instil an air of intimacy, while the dining room doesn’t hold back with a large picture window that really sets the scene. The bunkroom’s tall window slides back into the wall – making it easy for the grandchildren to hop in and out – and the kitchen has a similar design. Its large, square sliding panel sits level with the bench and disappears into a wall cavity, positioned to frame a solo poplar tree in the paddock over the fence.
Small, shuttered windows are another practical yet inherently playful consideration. “We wanted to capture the main living room view with a fixed pane, so we added these little windows on either side of it so you can open them up and let the breeze through,” explains Beer. Lying low to the ground and covered by a shutter that forms part of the cladding when closed (“We only wanted the air, not the light,” he says) the square ventilation openings are yet another fun escape hatch for the wee ones.
For such a fine piece of contemporary architecture, the home doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a looseness to the place; it’s full of personality, serene and special. The family have already deemed the garage “too nice” to act as a mere car park, so the vehicles have been relegated to outside, freeing up space for a multipurpose room/gym. The home’s walls remain pristine, without a picture or painting in sight. “It’s pretty amazing,” says Beer. “They love the space so much, they can’t bring themselves to cover it up.”
1. Entry
2. Dining
3. Snug
4. Outdoor Living
5. Kitchen
6. Shower Room
7. Living
8. Bedroom
9. Bedroom/Study
10. Bathroom
11. Laundry
12. Bunk Room
13. Garage
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