A modern home in Otago Bay, Australia, designed by local interior design Studio Topology Studio. The design of the house plays a role of concealment and exposure by contrasting local materials and dramatic forms. The house embraces its unique location, looking outwards, while remaining deeply rooted in the foundations of the site. The structure of the building refers to the obvious sense of closure and embrace in the landscape, and the gestures echo the curving contours of the site, creating a vista of adjacent property and distant hills.

Throughout the design process, the segmented work allowed the architect to carefully consider the site level and explore in detail the relationship between the building and the ground. Courtyards, colonnades, window sills and terraces soften the interface between the building and the landscape and encourage connectivity by creating Spaces that are protected from summer sun, rain and wind.

Externally warm rough masonry acts as an extension of the site and also as a form of protection from the elements. The thick exaggerated walls and deep colonnades play a role in thermal mass loading and solar protection, with the deep reveals and openings responding to the angles of the summer sun while the thermal mass allows for the winter sun to be absorbed through the slab. These same elements are also key to the home’s bold architectural formality, which, from the waterfront,  looks to be made from two volumes, sitting atop one another.

The interiors express the external materiality, combining the rough masonry with more refined elements and a timber ceiling that runs the continuous curve for the length of the home. This ceiling acts a gesture to the movement into and outward from the home, lifting up upon entry, dipping to create a sense of enclosure within, and then focusing outward again toward the river and Mount Wellington views beyond. As a result, the transition between inside and out is deliberate yet effortless.