Interior Motive

A sophisticated retreat by architecture + at Medlands Beach on Great Barrier Island rethinks conventional bach living.

- Simon Farrell-Green

Not so long ago, Stuart Gardyne spent a night at the house he designed on Great Barrier Island, only to discover that the neighbours use the place as a thoroughfare to reach other homes. He got talking with them, and it quickly became apparent some are less than fond of their urbane, intellectual neighbour, with its hooded eyes and inward focus. They found it austere and closed. “It doesn’t have the cottagey charm,” says Gardyne, of Wellington-based architecture +.

In fairness, the house isn’t closed, and it’s far from unwelcoming, though it does have an attractively monolithic look that might be perceived as imposing. Set on a garden block down a long driveway, the grassy approach is deliberately informal. There isn’t a front door: a stroll across the lawn takes you to a deck and in through a sliding glass door, from where you look straight through the house and out the other side.

There is a sort of calm resolve to the house, which was designed for a New Zealand couple while they were based in Beijing, and their four children. Rather than austerity or closure, there’s a sense of retreat and respite woven into the very skin of the house – early on, the owners expressed a desire for a courtyard house, not a beach house. It’s something of an intriguing brief for a coastal home – so often we expect them (and more so on Great Barrier Island) to be glorified tents, with openness and views from every room. “It was about having a house that’s more inward-focussed than outward,” says Gardyne. “That doesn’t imply disengagement with the landscape, but there’s an intimate engagement with the site.”