Architecture
Solid Ground: Homes That Make the Most of Concrete
Whether it's an accent or the dominant material, these kiwi houses show how delightful this most prosaic material can be
Despite a reputation for being a country of sun and beaches, and the general pleasures of indoor-outdoor flow – an impression partly created by the fact that many architecturally designed houses are at the beach – New Zealand is often cold. In the north, it rains. In the south, winter can be brutally cold indeed, with temperatures often dropping below freezing and plenty of snow.
Not surprisingly, our houses have a bit of heft and weight to them: sometimes you want a proper wall between you and the great outdoors, something reassuringly solid that keeps the elements out and the warmth in. Here are some great examples of homes around New Zealand that stand strong on solid ground, using the beauty of concrete.
Not surprisingly, our houses have a bit of heft and weight to them: sometimes you want a proper wall between you and the great outdoors, something reassuringly solid that keeps the elements out and the warmth in. Here are some great examples of homes around New Zealand that stand strong on solid ground, using the beauty of concrete.
Along with timber and plywood, architects seem to have a soft spot for concrete: there’s a long vernacular tradition of concrete, often thrown together on the spot and formed roughly. Where others might see something unfinished or brutal, kiwis see something pleasantly raw, a product with natural imperfections and marks which needs nothing added to it.
Faulder Avenue
Architect Andew Meiring designed this elegant house for a family in the central Auckland suburb of Westmere, where elegant timber-formed concrete walls anchor a series of black timber boxes.
At the front of the house, a high wall offers a sense of containment, creating an east-facing courtyard behind that is completely private. In less capable hands, a wall like this would feel rude: here, it’s set well back from the street behind an elegant garden of native plantings, which gives something back to the neighbourhood.
Architect Andew Meiring designed this elegant house for a family in the central Auckland suburb of Westmere, where elegant timber-formed concrete walls anchor a series of black timber boxes.
At the front of the house, a high wall offers a sense of containment, creating an east-facing courtyard behind that is completely private. In less capable hands, a wall like this would feel rude: here, it’s set well back from the street behind an elegant garden of native plantings, which gives something back to the neighbourhood.
The house is long and skinny, stretching along the site to the backyard: here, another concrete wall sits at the back of an outdoor lounging area next to the kitchen.
Inside, another wall divides a sunken living room from the dining room and kitchen. It’s open plan, but the solidity of the wall makes the living room feel slightly separate – crucial in a house with young children. The built-in tan leather couches are a beautiful touch, contrasting richly with the rough-hewn concrete wall and the black timber cladding, which Meiring brought inside the house.
Rawhiti
It’s won national architecture awards and for good reason: Studio Pacific’s design for a sophisticated ‘sleepout’, on a family property north of Auckland, managed the impossible. With this build, they created four extra bedrooms and bathrooms without making a mess of an established site, where the owners and their family had holidayed for decades. The sleepout is buried into the hill with a green roof: from a distance, it looks like the hill just carries on.
See more of this holiday home
It’s won national architecture awards and for good reason: Studio Pacific’s design for a sophisticated ‘sleepout’, on a family property north of Auckland, managed the impossible. With this build, they created four extra bedrooms and bathrooms without making a mess of an established site, where the owners and their family had holidayed for decades. The sleepout is buried into the hill with a green roof: from a distance, it looks like the hill just carries on.
See more of this holiday home
Inside, the concrete was left in its natural state and sealed – nothing is covered up. Bedrooms are contained inside black timber boxes that run out to the lawn, while light wells bring both fresh air and daylight deep into the building. It is a rich palette of materials, used sparingly but in a way that is secure and enveloping, without being oppressive.
There’s a long tradition of buildings like this in New Zealand: during World War I and II, cities and communities around the country built gun emplacements from concrete on prominent hilltops, buried into the earth for security. Concrete has also long been used in the landscape by farmers building water races and milking sheds. There’s a sense of those projects in the Rawhiti build, the way the building slides into the landscape in a way that is at once sleek and rustic.
Herne Bay Villa
On the face of it, a concrete addition isn’t the most logical response to a 19th-century wooden building, yet architect Gerrad Hall’s beautifully restrained extension manages to both honour the original as well as creating something special and new. The extension was a response to the clients’ desire to connect with their flat back garden – something the old villa, sitting at street level, never managed to do.
On the face of it, a concrete addition isn’t the most logical response to a 19th-century wooden building, yet architect Gerrad Hall’s beautifully restrained extension manages to both honour the original as well as creating something special and new. The extension was a response to the clients’ desire to connect with their flat back garden – something the old villa, sitting at street level, never managed to do.
Hall says he wanted to give the house a bit of weight: the new extension faces partly south, so a glassy open pavilion would have been cold. While the kitchen/dining area is open, with a double-height void reaching up to the ceiling height of the original house, the house is anchored by the concrete walls and beams.
The separate living room is set a little bit below the level of the lawn, and has a lower ceiling height than the rest of the house to create a sense of enclosure – helped by the beautiful patterns left from the formwork of the concrete.
The Boatsheds
When you first look at the Boatsheds, a house on Auckland’s Takapuna Beach, you notice its lightness: different types of timber, black steel and glass – so much glass – enabling the place to open and close depending on the weather conditions.
And yet, when you take a second look you start to notice the concrete, which appears in multiple forms throughout the place. Here, between kitchen and family room, a wall of concrete blocks wraps around a corner, creating a solid core to the join between two of the ‘boat sheds’.
Take a look around this property
When you first look at the Boatsheds, a house on Auckland’s Takapuna Beach, you notice its lightness: different types of timber, black steel and glass – so much glass – enabling the place to open and close depending on the weather conditions.
And yet, when you take a second look you start to notice the concrete, which appears in multiple forms throughout the place. Here, between kitchen and family room, a wall of concrete blocks wraps around a corner, creating a solid core to the join between two of the ‘boat sheds’.
Take a look around this property
In the entry, you notice those beautifully elegant, long columns, abstracted offset forms that help to define the entryway, but still allow light and air to bounce around the house.
While here, on the other side of the kitchen, there’s a subtle piece of formed concrete, rising up out of the ground as if it’s always been there, contrasting beautifully with the hard edges of the stainless steel kitchen. With so much going on, it could be a mish-mash of forms and materials: instead it’s a house composed of beautifully layered spaces and carefully chosen materials that make it so very special.
House n on s
In Wellington, meanwhile, Anne Kelly of A.K.A Architects gave a delightfully solid touch to a wooden house on the Kapiti Coast by building a concrete spine through the middle of the house, formed from shuttered concrete. This was an ode to the farming background of the house’s owners, which goes with the timber floors and the black-stained cedar. The spine starts at the entry, creating a solid, enclosed hall.
In Wellington, meanwhile, Anne Kelly of A.K.A Architects gave a delightfully solid touch to a wooden house on the Kapiti Coast by building a concrete spine through the middle of the house, formed from shuttered concrete. This was an ode to the farming background of the house’s owners, which goes with the timber floors and the black-stained cedar. The spine starts at the entry, creating a solid, enclosed hall.
It then runs through the house, left unadorned – surprising you in places, and contrasting with the highly polished interior. It’s a subtle touch, but it does the job beautifully.
Closeburn Station House
Warren & Mahoney have an enviable history with concrete, stretching back to the early days of the Christchurch school when their Modernist designs were built from unadorned concrete block, with pitched roofs and simple square windows.
Things have changed a little since then, as you can see with this beautiful house at Closeburn Station just outside Queenstown. It’s a stunner, sitting on a rocky outcrop with a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains.
Warren & Mahoney have an enviable history with concrete, stretching back to the early days of the Christchurch school when their Modernist designs were built from unadorned concrete block, with pitched roofs and simple square windows.
Things have changed a little since then, as you can see with this beautiful house at Closeburn Station just outside Queenstown. It’s a stunner, sitting on a rocky outcrop with a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains.
The house has two wings – a bedroom wing clad in cedar and a living wing clad in zinc: the architects designed the house around the rock, which helps to bed it into the landscape. The board-finished concrete forms complement the cedar and zinc perfectly, making the house appear as if it is rising out of the rock.
The effect continues inside, where a fireplace made from faceted concrete mirrors the broken, jagged forms of the rock outside. It’s a big fireplace: the structure makes the house feel solid and secure, despite the huge and sometimes challenging landscape outside. This is what concrete was designed for: heft.
Congreve House
And then, there’s the Congreve House, designed by Pip Cheshire on a clifftop site in Auckland almost 25 years ago. Cheshire built the house for an art-collecting couple, but the place is about as far from a white gallery-like box as it’s possible to get: in fact it’s as much a sculpture as the art it houses. The entire home was built from small concrete blocks, which have a delicacy and lightness despite the house’s bunker-like form from the street.
10 design features using concrete
And then, there’s the Congreve House, designed by Pip Cheshire on a clifftop site in Auckland almost 25 years ago. Cheshire built the house for an art-collecting couple, but the place is about as far from a white gallery-like box as it’s possible to get: in fact it’s as much a sculpture as the art it houses. The entire home was built from small concrete blocks, which have a delicacy and lightness despite the house’s bunker-like form from the street.
10 design features using concrete
In the hall, the effect is almost medieval: long narrow windows set into the walls let in light, yet the overwhelming effect is one of containment and solidity – something designers of houses on cliffs often forget about.
The Congreve house has presence and weight, a sense of containment that you could never achieve with lightweight materials. And yet, thanks to the impeccable detailing, it has a lightness to it that is singularly delightful.
Cheshire wasn’t afraid of concrete: throughout the house, he used it in its unadorned form. Here in the bedroom, the ceiling, walls and floor are all concrete, complete with construction marks and joins: instead of a thoughtless wall of glass – which would be the obvious solution – there’s a carefully delineated window set into the wall, with a stunning view off the cliff and out to sea. But despite all that weight, it never feels oppressive: this is what concrete was designed to do.
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TELL US
Do you love or hate concrete in residential architecture? Tell us why in the Comments below.
MORE
Browse more stories on interesting architecture