Award-winning and windswept: Stacey Farrell
Located on New Zealand’s rugged South Coast, the windswept site for this small holiday house faces north and gently descends to the dunes.
Winner of the 2022 TIDA New Zealand Architect New Home of the Year, the low grounded home is bedded into the landscape, hunkering down from the harsh coastal weather, while materials and colours are deliberately pared back so as not to compete with the natural environment.
Designed by architect Stacey Farrell, the home features two black and brown forms colliding; inspired by ocean waves journeying from the distant mountains across the bay and crashing into the shore.
The house itself wraps around a large windswept native beech tree, and opens to reveal views across dunes, the ocean and to snow-capped mountains.
The interior is oriented to make the most of the sun, views and solar gain, with a reduced material palette of two internal linings to match the two external claddings.
Not only is this home designed to be sustainable, with a small environmental impact, it’s also relocatable should sea levels rise.
The TIDA judges felt that this discrete hideaway retreat illustrated how thoughtful design and architecture can make the most of a remote site, and produce a very distinctive home – on a very small budget.
