The characterful Durham Street Townhouses sit proudly about a shared courtyard punctuated with private walkways, dramatic pergolas, and bold roof forms.
Around this central space the proportions and arrangement of the buildings work together to create a village-like atmosphere, while oiled cedar walls and slatted screens combine with the careful composition of glazed openings to provide privacy to each unit.
“Speartha Broidnithe Eadach” – The heavens embroidered cloths from the W.B Yeats poem ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’.
Drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape, a landscape of continual changing color, texture and mood and a landscape that is sensationalized from the studio of 23b Walkers Road. Yeats description of something so fantastical, which no one can ever own, was an appropriate salutation towards the encompassing beauty that is celebrated from each space on both levels of the plan, in particular when one is having a bath.
The project comprises of 2 new pavilions. The siting of these pavilions is alongside an existing large H shaped house. The H shaped house sits on a levelled hill top which forms part of a large estate.
The design of this home was a direct response to its site, being south facing and on a steep bluff overlooking Hobson Bay, a city fringe suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. “It had great views back to the city, and my client asked to be able to stand in her kitchen and see the Sky Tower,” says architect, Paul Leuschke. The issue was there was no building platform.
“It was a delicate exercise in making the most of a not-so-favourable site facing the wrong way [for the sun] and on a cliff, plus achieving a degree of separation from its neighbours.” says the architect.
This barn-inspired home offers a striking reference to rural vernacular. Long and lean, the form is remarkably simple. A monolithic roof plane sweeps up past the large established walnut tree to form a double-height concert hall living space with mezzanine viewing gallery for the two retired musicians to practice, play and entertain friends.
Chrysalis Early Learning Center is an innovative early education and play center for 150 children, drawing on the culture and spirit of its place to create a nurturing environment around two mature heritage trees.
New Zealand was the last landmass to be inhabited, and then deforested with unrivalled speed. Its new cleared landscapes are still so young they shift, when they fail new native trees grow. It might take a hundred years or more, but buildings that participate in this shift could one day inhabit near-original forest. This is something new, for New Zealand architecture was established and has remained in clearings. To inhabit its original forest landscape, architecture must understand existing context rather than generate new landscapes, it must be soft, patient and ready to change; as we exhibited at the 2015 Prague International Architecture Festival entitled Soft-Context:Soft-Architecture.
This is a house for a family of five in the inner city suburb of Grey Lynn, Auckland. The empty site was purchased on the edge of Grey Lynn Park steeply rising from the street in an east-west direction leaving the long boundaries with north and south aspects. The brief was for a family house to span the evolution of the family from infancy to teenage years.
Tarawera High School is situated between River Road and the Tarawera River in the small mill town of Kawerau.
The design reflects Kawerau’s unique culture, history and landscape. The masterplan proposes a solution that inspires learning & pro-motes the fulfilment of potential in Kawerau’s rangatahi (younger generation / youth).
Article source: MCAS-Max Capocaccia Architecture Studio
The brief required a rectangular floor plan, whilst the creation of partition walls not to celling height and small separations between elements achieved captivating interior spaces that detract from the simple form.
The whole of the North façade and part of the West are glazed so that the entire view is accessible from the living area, dining and kitchen.
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