View mastery

This rural dwelling harnesses an epic vista while also championing what’s on the inside.

This rural dwelling harnesses an epic vista while also championing what’s on the inside.

Sometimes good design is about holding back. Not playing all your cards at once. Drip-feeding the wow moments. That’s exactly what this home in Whitford, south of Auckland, does.

This was a slow-burning dream for owners Tracie and Marcus Male, who fell prey to the GFC, buying and selling a different site while financial forces swept away their plans. Ten years after they started on the path, they finally settled on this couple of hectares on a wind-buffeted ridgeline in a rural subdivision.

Architect Roy Tebbutt of Strachan Group Architects (SGA) acknowledges it would have been easy to rush in, spread the home across the slope and turn fully glazed windows to the outlook that whirls around in a dizzy 360-degree span from Manukau Heads to the spread of Auckland City on the horizon, the islands of the Gulf and the Coromandel Peninsula. “It really is all-encompassing,” he says.

Although the views were uncontained, the building platform was the opposite: a pre-approved 20m x 20m square. “This constraint led us to a different process and

TOP Mānuka and kānuka to the south-west provide a green backdrop to the home. ABOVE Nīkau palms were planted along the street-side boundary wall to soften the concrete. OPPOSITE A Radial dining table from Città is teamed with Tangerine chairs from Simon James and a PH5 pendant light by Louis Poulsen from Design Denmark.