Ground Work

- Claire McCall

Rather like an English teacher tasking students to write an essay with no topic or word limit, this Arrowtown site posed an immense challenge: an over-abundance of opportunity. In usual circumstances, the parameters of possibility are clear: ring-fenced by section size, concerns about privacy, height-to-boundary considerations, how to capture the most sunlight, or constrain the view. But what if the view is a spectacle of 360-degree awesomeness?

The Wakatipu Basin is the hole in the geological doughnut of frosted, jagged peaks that rise from the valley in a wraparound panorama that can be overwhelming. When architect Richard Naish of RTA Studio first walked this landscape with his clients, a sculptor and a graphic designer, it was to demarcate a building site. “Very unusually, we had the freedom to choose,” says Naish.

They settled on a place with rolling topography: a place of gentle, folded movement where the bulldozer would stand silent in the contractor’s yard and the home’s forms would grow organically as if emerging from the earth. “We took our cue from the schist outcrops that are scattered throughout Central Otago,” says Naish.

Rather than the expected – a home that makes the big call with a singular focus – the tyranny of choice was deftly avoided by a plan that resembles a radiating star, with elements fragmented around a central core. Richard calls these pavilions ‘view catchers’ and a cobbled forecourt is the centrifugal force that tethers these points to each other.