In Practice:
Mount Barker House
We join Amelia Nuku to explore the thinking behind Mount Barker House, and how memory, materiality and landscape shaped its design.
What was the starting point for the Mount Barker House, and how did the brief evolve as the project took shape?
The land had been in the clients' family since the 1970s, with a modest holiday crib built for seven children. Four generations of summers and memories shared. When the clients came to us, the brief was simple on the surface: build a home that could be enjoyed by the wider whānau, but also function as a primary residence for the owners.
However, after many conversations, what the brief was really asking was how do you build something new without losing the essence of what was already there, and create something that would stand the test of time for future generations, much like the original house. That question carried through every design decision.
How does materiality enter your design process, and how do those decisions carry through to the way a space is finished and furnished?
Our approach is reductive rather than additive, materials have to be hard wearing, practical, and purposeful. That comes from both a sustainability conviction and a practical one. The fewer materials in a space, the more each one has to earn its place.
For Mount Barker House, the question was what will perform in Central Otago's extremes, weather and patina over time, and fit the context of the site. Inside, the palette was deliberately utilitarian: a polished concrete slab, ply ceilings and joinery, stainless steel benches. Nothing decorative, nothing superfluous.
The furnishing logic follows the same thread, but we also place a great importance on choosing pieces that are well crafted, beautifully designed, and preferably Aotearoa made.
We like to showcase and support Aotearoa makers and indigenous artists where possible, so whenever there is an opportunity where the clients would like us to select interior pieces we always draw from a wide range of talented Aotearoa makers.
The boundary between inside and outside feels deliberately dissolved here. How did you think about where the building ends and the landscape begins?
The house needed to shift with the seasons and to harness the conditions of the site rather than resist them. Central Otago is a climate of extremes. Summer can be hot, and the house needed to be able to open completely to the decking areas so that those spaces felt like an extension of the interior. In winter, it needed to close off in a way that still allowed the family to feel connected to the views and the natural rhythms of the environment, the light shifting across the mountains, the snow on the hills.
That idea of seasonal responsiveness shaped a lot of the threshold decisions. The exterior breezeways and decking areas thread the house into the site. The planting buffers work in a similar way, they establish soft privacy thresholds between the bedroom wing and the decking areas, with the intention of helping the house recede into its environment over time, rather than impose upon it.
New Zealand homes have a particular relationship with light and landscape. Are there local materials, climates, or cultural narratives that shaped the choices you made here?
The ambition was a house that worked hard with what the site offered, rather than making a grand statement about being there. Passive house principles shaped the design. Large north-facing glazed sliders and west-facing bifold doors serve a dual purpose, drawing the sun deep into the home in winter to heat the thermal mass of the concrete slab. The northern pergola is slatted to admit low winter sun and shade the living spaces in summer; the western pergola is left open, with vines growing along the frame, cooling in summer and bare in winter.
The same reductive approach that shaped the interior carried through to every exterior choice. Cedar cladding was selected for its performance in the Central Otago climate. Profiled metal cladding, exposed cross-bracing elements, and macrocarpa pergolas are left to silver off over time, the building ageing into its setting rather than resisting it. Every material decision was made with the same intention: to allow the building to gently recede into the landscape rather than impose upon it.
How did the way this client lives, their rhythms and how they use a space, shape the final design?
The home was designed to accommodate the rhythms of a full family life. The clients have children and grandchildren who come to stay, and the house needed to hold that, the noise and movement of a large gathering, while still feeling like a place two people could live in quietly day to day. This drove a lot of the spatial decisions.
The living wing opens completely to a large north-facing lawn, which means you can sit at the island bench with the sliders thrown open in summer and keep an eye on grandchildren playing outside. The easy, relaxed connection between inside and outside was one of the strengths of the existing crib on the site, so we wanted to capture the essence of that within the new house.
It was important that the house offered places to retreat. The master bedroom is buffered by a planting threshold that creates a degree of privacy and quiet, while still allowing the grandparents to feel connected to the wider activity of the house. The house holds both things, togetherness and the ability to step back from it, without those feeling like competing demands.