Bivvy House
Lake Wakatipu, Otago
Mountain peaks, river valleys and glacial lakes sketch the subalpine landscape of the Southern Lakes – an environment revered by Jennifer Arnold and Alan Luckie. “It’s the wilderness of it all,” notes Jennifer.
“That immense space with its diamond-sharp air and the ability to engage with all the elements.”
With a bare site overlooking Lake Wakatipu, they engaged architect Vaughn McQuarrie to design a shelter that would “sing with the music of the sun, wind and rain”.
They discussed bivvies and huts, thermal efficiency and humble materials, and didn’t need (or necessarily want) the final design to resemble a traditional house.
Vaughn looked to the old gold miners’ huts of the area, explored as a child – “beautiful little ruins that propose the simplest way to live in the mountain environment”.
The building site itself had been cut from solid rock, with a lot of gravel and small boulders left behind. So the idea of a house assembled from fragments initiated two solid concrete forms to the east and west (sleeping spaces), with a simple tin roof slung between them to form a ‘bivvy’ for the main living space.
Sleeping spaces are dark and cocooned – band-sawn plywood lines the walls and ceiling, with small windows perfectly placed to frame a local landmark.
By contrast, the central living space is open and light, connected with the ground outside, the valley wall to the north, and the sky. Winter sun pours in to heat the concrete floor, which is coloured the same grey as the gravel outside.
The geometry of the house – with its tilting and splaying wall and roof planes – is generated from a wonderfully elaborate overlay of site contours, view shafts and the sun path. This poetic representation of the site topography echoes the splintered and carved faces of glacial valleys and schist to create a complex and interesting form.
“As we look outside at the world, we feel enfolded within the mountains,” says Jennifer.
“The cave and the boulder are very primeval, and it feels slightly sublime and sacred inside. The bedrooms feel like a James Turrell artwork with their carefully framed views; the whole building feels like a little gallery space.”
Vaughn looked to the old gold miners’ huts of the area, explored as a child – “beautiful little ruins that propose the simplest way to live in the mountain environment”.