This holiday home is arranged around the rituals of New Zealand beach utopia. The control and celebration of the environmental conditions – wind, sun, and sea – make this design successful.

Within a suburban context that houses a complexity of form and materials, the palette for this beach house was kept deliberately muted and limited. The emphasis of the sculptural enclosure was on protecting and revealing the functional nodes of the dwelling. The form controls and celebrates the environmental conditions and is arranged around New Zealand beachfront living rituals. The design of the house is to be self-contained amid a cluttered suburban backdrop with carefully considered outlooks that frame and draw focus to the beach and adjoining reserve. Detailing focussed on the Pacific Rim tradition of timber-framed construction. Using the same material, cedar, in various methodologies produces different qualities of space, opacity and transparency.