Wyuna House
Wyuna House
2021, Glenorchy
Photography Credit: Marina Matthews
Our client’s passion for architecture was expressed in a very unique brief: take inspiration from Richard Neutra’s Palm Spring villas, Central Otago’s rustic materiality, a touch of Orient through the articulation of pavilions of various heights, and ensuring the landscape is always present and visible from any room.
The house was articulated as three pavilions in the landscape, projecting toward Lake Wakatipu. The two outer bedroom pavilions offer private extrospective retreats, with a living/gathering pavilion at the centre. Sheltered outdoor spaces nestle in-between these projecting forms.
Highly transparent galleries meander between pavilions allowing circulation to ‘take its time’, enjoying a strong connection to the wider context while offering points of refuge along the way.
The entry to the house provides a vestibule of calm internalized focus that offers relief from the surrounding vastness and often extreme climate. From here the architectural journey allows the context to be re-revealed anew.
An emphasis has been placed on the use of a durable low maintenance material palette that complements the natural colours of the surrounding bracken covered hillsides and mountains beyond.
Left alone, these materials will change and patina gracefully allowing the house to feel established as part of the wider landscape with the passing of time.
