Architecture House
Project Location:
Oriental Bay Wellington
Categories:
Residential Engineering Excellence
Project Description:
On a steep eroded sea escarpment facing the inner Wellington harbour, this dwelling is being built in two stages. The first part ‘the cave’, completed in 1997; the second part ‘the tent’, being occupied in 2005. Architecture Workshop is interested in undoing the hierarchy between architecture, landscape and infrastructure, and for this house the intention was for the whole site to remain as landscape. The conceptual idea is a constructed environment. The cave, a thick heavily insulated concrete structure is placed against the boundary to provide retreat and privacy.
In spring when the cherry trees blossom, the Japanese hang curtains among the trees in the garden -a beautiful image we think, ‘so lattice-like and permeable that it can approximate the temporary tents or huts of nomads’. This idea of Japanese architect Toyo Ito, of turning a house into a more fluid entity, is a form of questioning the house as a permanent locus and a consumer status symbol.
The other living activities are to be supported with only the essential or minimal architectural intervention: