Cheshire Architects at Northland's Mountain Landing

A sneak preview from our June/July issue, which will be on newsstands on June 7. In it, Pip Cheshire, the designer of this lodge/getaway at Mountain Landing in the Bay of Islands, ponders the question of bigness in residential architecture, and the consequent fear of botching a beautiful landscape with an architectural intervention. Here's an image of the lodge he designed, photographed by Patrick Reynolds - as you can see, the landscape around it is extraordinary and, in our opinion, the house is a suitably strong but respectful presence in it:


Mountain Landing is a private subdivision at the northern end of the Bay of Islands. Once a run-down farm, the developers have invested heavily in the creation of wetlands and vast new planted areas. This is a view of the house from down at the bay - it's one of the first homes to be built in the development.

And here's a view of the bay from the home's terrace:

In the magazine, we ask Pip if the prospect of building on such an amazing site was intimidating.

"Yes," he says. "The nervousness here stems from two aspects, that I might stuff up a great opportunity and a nice paddock and, more importantly, that the site is so loaded - high landscape and heritage values - that the building couldn’t blink, it needed to be strong without dominating."

We also asked about his decision to adopt a very different strategy from "touching the earth lightly", Glenn Murcutt's famous architectural dictum.

"I think that Murcutt line of touching the earth lightly is great and certainly fits Australia’s history and landscape," Pip says, "but we are a land of major earthworks, of trenches, palisades and ramparts. It's not a universal: I have some lighter projects but where its a big project, a big brief, then I guess I would usually dig in if there was some sort of slope."

You can read the full Q+A with Pip and the story he's written about the property in our next issue (it isn't often that architects are also authors - in Pip's case, his recent book Architecture Uncooked - so we took the opportunity to commission him to write about his own project for this issue). Keep an eye out for it on newsstands soon.

Marshall Cook's Gold Medal

Congratulations to architect Marshall Cook, who has been awarded the NZ Institute of Architects' Gold Medal for 2010, given to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the practice of architecture. You may remember Marshall's own house in Auckland's Freemans Bay as a finalist in HOME New Zealand's 2008 Home of the Year award.

His awards citation made special mention of his house designs:

"The whole body of his work is characterised by a complete and exhaustive knowledge of materials, technology, colour and space placed at the service of a liberal, generous and humane design philosophy. The result has been a series of houses of the first quality. They form memorable and delightful environments within which domestic life in all its aspects is both celebrated and nourished. These houses represent high-water marks of contemporary New Zealand domestic architecture which will continue to be valued and studied by their future inhabitants and by architects."

These photographs of Marshall's own home in Freemans Bay were taken by Patrick Reynolds. This shot shows the confident mixing of materials - terracotta tiles, marble, timber fins - facing the street.

Inside, the house centres around an exceptionally comfortable kitchen and dining area that opens onto a small courtyard. This whole area feels remarkably spacious, especially when you consider that the home has been designed for a relatively compact inner-city site.

At the end of this bright, open space is much more snug and secluded living room. The stairs at the rear of this shot lead to Marshall and Prue's bedroom. All of it feels deceptively casual, but as with all apparently effortless structures, a great deal of consideration has gone into the creation of each of these spaces.

Charles Renfro on The Nation

Our visiting guest star Charles Renfro of New York's Diller, Scofidio + Renfro was interviewed by TV3's The Nation when he was here recently (thanks again to First Windows & Doors, who made Charles' visit and his Auckland and Wellington lectures possible). The TV piece is at the link below.

Visiting New York architect Charles Renfro

Also, DS+R's latest work at New York's Lincoln Center was reviewed in the New York Times this weekend by Nicolai Ouroussoff. This is the second stage of the redesign of the Center DS+R are leading, part of what will be a billion-dollar redesign. Ouroussoff seems less pleased with the firm's work on this stage than he was with their earlier redesign of the Center's Alice Tully Hall, though there is high praise for the new structure DS+R have inserted at the Center, with a sweeping grass roof from which to overlook the plaza, as you can see in this image by Beatrice de Gea for the New York Times.



Here's the link to the New York Times slide show; you can also click through to the accompanying article.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/20/arts/design/20100521-lincoln-slideshow.html