Cheshire Architects Ltd
Project Location:
Goat Island
Categories:
WINNER: Cladding Building Envelope
Project Description:
The prominence given by a toughened building code to cavity-based timber cladding systems has of late raised them from the detail sheets of a few keen architects and builders into a national ‘common denominator’ for timber construction. The cavity is now almost universally understood to underwrite sound construction practice in a nation where rain, moisture and wind are all in abundance, and timber dominates the structural and material palette.
It has always been the responsibility of architecture to vigorously explore the opportunities latent in the methods and materials of its craft. The bunkhouse project is fundamentally about this exploration; its designers have committed great energy to exploiting the cavity, stretching and pulling it open until eventually they occupied the very space between skeleton and skin in this building. The building here is as a body; porous and breathable, its skin filters the harsh Kiwi light from the delicate study and resting places within, and slows the rumbunctious easterlies to allow for circulation spaces that are not buried inside the plan but located on its very edge, where the delights of an extraordinary setting and the changing of seasons and weather patterns can be viscerally enjoyed.