Harbouring connection
An Akaroa home offers shared spaces and separate wings for privacy and practicality.
Located on a waterfront site in Akaroa, this house combines contemporary design with a sensitivity to the scale and aesthetic of the existing built fabric. Akaroa is known for its charming harbour edge and historic buildings. The design employs a series of steep gables, with perpendicular window proportions and vernacular materials evoking a sense of regional familiarity without any historical reproduction.
The clients are entertainers and enjoy spending time with their extended family. This holiday home serves three generations – the owners with their three children and a growing number of grandchildren. The planning of the home needed to accommodate many people and provide a variety of rooms, some flexible, some private, while others are grand. Part of the design is to break the house into three main parts of two sleeping wings on either end of the site connected by a central living area. This enables the owners to stay in one wing of the house and close off the other wing when not in use. External shutters help to keep the privacy when required, while creating a dynamic rhythm to the exterior elevation of the house when seen from the waterfront.
The other wing houses three more bedrooms, including bunk beds for the grandchildren. The bedrooms are all painted in different colours, each with a playful character. The ceiling of the bedrooms are clad in gaboon plywood which creates warmth.
The two wings are connected by the central communal space which forms the heart of the home. There is a feature pendant in the double height space, designed by the owner’s son, a Londonbased product designer – layered rings of green patinated brass reminiscent of the seaside location and volcanic land of Akaroa.
A key factor in designing for an extended family was to not oversize the rooms, but rather to consider smaller private areas, giving space to large communal spaces which gather the family together. The house as a result has a tight footprint, but with generous spaces where they matter.
Blending in
The site is unique in that it is very wide and shallow in depth – with its width orientated to the waterfront. The challenge for architects Pac Studio Ltd was to create a building which took advantage of the view but does not impose on the waterfront itself, especially when seen from the historic pier. The key design move was to break the building into a series of discrete steeply pitched gabled roofs that recede and push forward. This created the look of a number of modestly sized buildings and maintains the intimate, mostly small scale built form of Akaroa.