Description:

RHR house is a family home, a place for creating lasting memories and to emphasize a casual and playful atmosphere for its occupants.
The site is located close to the end of the Christchurch Southshore spit, between the Pacific Ocean and the Ōtākaro, Avon River/Estuary. This coastal environment is known for its ruggedness and harshness, but also its vulnerability due to movement in land from the Christchurch earthquakes, combined with sea-level rise and climate change bringing more frequent severe rain events. These changes have given rise to potential inundation.

This location presented an opportunity to redefine architectural principles and inspired an experimental house, that focuses on people and place. Focus and clarity are enhanced through reduction, dematerialisation, and minimal finishing. The result: architecture that evokes emotion.

The design draws ideas from place and environment, through materials and colour palette. The overall composition is brutal, but simple, reminiscent of a boat moored next to a wharf. Taking inspiration from the late Peter Beaven’s Lyttleton tunnel building, dubbed Canterbury’s fifth ship.

The programme utilises stacked floor plates to accommodate raised minimum floor levels and pushes the upper level to the highest point to enhance views. While the lower level is given over to storage space.

Spaces are designed to evoke calm and retreat from busy life, accentuated by the contrast between rugged exterior and soft interior spaces.

The arrival is one of slow reveal with pauses in time, following a timber board walk, where you are drawn to a soft green stair form floating from the concrete floor above. This leads upwards to the entry door, semi concealed and very casual, like you would find in a seaside Bach. Once inside you arrive in the kitchen the pivot point of the house, from which all other spaces work off, lounge, dining, and outdoor living which offers shelter from the dominant easterly sea breeze. Passing through the kitchen/living level you move further upwards into Level 2 which comprises four bedrooms, ensuite, bathroom, and study/reading nook. This upper level has a cave like feel with lower ceilings and reduced glazing which frames and captures views as you move through the spaces.

The varied functions are arranged over three separate levels, this is clearly visible from the exterior, illustrating that ‘form follows function.’

The RHR House employs a minimalist palette of materials both inside and out. The exterior features simple concrete, white-painted steel, corrugated cladding, and grey fiberglass screens. Inside, natural plywood timber, black MDF, and black rubber are used, creating a stark but welcoming contrast. The design embraces sustainability through good passive design and incorporating reused and recycled materials such as internal doors, temporary timber, framing, plywood offcuts, and recycled Rimu for various features.