Black Beauty

Words by Nicole Stock
Photography Simon Devitt

A striking cliff-top site west of Auckland was both bane and boon for this dark and handsome Patterson Associates-designed house.

This house, designed by Andrew Patterson of Patterson Associates, could have easily been a castle in the sky – a daydream. Designed in 2003, this house looked as though it might be confined to the blueprints due to an extended five-year clash with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) for consent. The project’s dramatic site was its blessing as well as its curse.

Why so much trouble? Well, the site, a 200 hectare working sheep farm that extends prow-like along a peninsula near Muriwai beach on Auckland’s West Coast – the house’s grand podium – was also a waving red flag. Its isolation and location makes the land here particularly precious and when a site is so valued, fears abound about its potential misuse.

Land has always been contentious. Perhaps especially so here when many key touchstones of our history are tied irrevocably to the land. While the Treaty’s conflicting assumptions about ownership would be the most obvious example, more recently, debate has swirled around the parallel interests of the public – represented by councils charged with protecting ‘significant landscapes’ – and the private owners
of property.

Although on private land – the family-owned sheep farm – the house can be glimpsed from the public coastal track between Bethells Beach (Te Henga) and Goldies Bush and this (assumed damaging) visual effect is what created difficulties. Though the Rodney District Council issued a resource and building consent for the house, it was the ARC who stepped in late in the process (half the house had already been built) intent on demolishing the house.

Wrangling, then, followed in the courts, but as the photos clearly show, the house eventually went ahead. I’m biased towards good architecture, I suppose, but these images don’t exactly paint a picture of detrimental visual effect. Perhaps if anything, the house, especially seen from afar (as in the opening spread) melts into the cliff to be an almost invisible shadow in a farm valley.

Patterson’s original concept for the house was drawn directly from these cliffs – that distinctly European form: the castle on the hill. The castle, in particular its spot on an exposed high site, lends itself easily to romantic notions of stone forts, though Patterson explains this house is “a fort protecting from the elements rather than the hordes”. (Though it seems the house was not immune from battles over its parcel.) However, at the same time as using the castle motif as a central idea, a New Zealand identity was always maintained, here again, because of the genuine New Zealandness of this site, but also in part from ideas pulled from works of artists like Gordon Walters.

Walters is most well known for his almost op-art contemporary ‘koru’ motif works but before those iconic works, Walters did a series of abstract plan or map-like paintings. Within the canvas, various sized rectangles sit within a field with the occasional squiggle, that, at least to someone with an architectural bent, seem distinctly diagrammatic, concerned with spatial arrangements, composition, and proportion.
The roof elevation, a series of interlocking rectangles, one a negative, the absence filled with the courtyard, are defined with heavy parapets delineating their shapes further and giving the roof a formal, drawn quality. The roof is like a built drawing.
You first see the house from above, as you drive down the hill towards the house. The roof is usually a forgotten, or at least hidden, amalgamation of all the extraneous stuff that is shunted out of site. Here, the roof is as Andrew Patterson explains, “the fifth elevation” as carefully organized and considered as any of the other elevations.
The dark-stained cedar and care in the texture and patterning of the materials throughout the house lend a sculptural quality, though with the rigid linearity of the plan, work perhaps like that of Bret Graham with his traditional black Maori etchings and sharp contemporary, scientific forms.

Along the landward, eastern façade that you first approach, the elevation is elegantly clad with flat strips of black timber. To relieve any potential of monotony and enliven the façade, the cladding changes to deeper, ridged strips within the front door and the end of the courtyard. Though still maintaining a strong sense of verticality, shadow is created with a deep board and batten cladding, which further disintegrates over the doorway to a gate-like arrangement. Likewise, the wall of the courtyard, completely closed off at first, can be opened with a series of pivoting doors that again maintain this vertical groundedness with the columns, but offer up a sense of transparency as the entire elevation changes from dark fortress wall, to a welcoming invitation.
Inside, black timber is also used, but given a more delicate and refined treatment. Walls clad in strips of vertical timber use a similar language from the exterior but the waxy finish brings to mind a well-worn sheen like old wooden steps seen in a castle. Another castle nuance, or perhaps again that careful thoughtfulness about texture, are the rose-head nails that punctuate each board almost like armour. A similar treatment is given to the kitchen where the appliances can be hidden behind large doors. Even the kitchen sink is hidden in a client-driven desire for clear surfaces. The tap is actually a shower faucet that coils inside the island’s sink.

The courtyard is designed with as much care as the other rooms in the house, indeed this space was considered a room. Enclosed on all sides and with an outdoor fireplace and connection to the adjoining dining and kitchen area, this is as much a living space as either the formal living room or the family room, it just happens to be open to the elements. That negative space, so key in the composition of the plan as seen in the roof elevation, is also essential once inside this house. It keeps the house from feeling too solid or thick and instead allows for an easy visual transparency between spaces. The entry hall, the living and kitchen and the family room all look out into this space and so there are views across and through to other areas of the house. The pool, too, another layer of graphic rectangles, also adds vibrant colour and reflects light into the rest of the house; the playful rippling of the water adds animation to the black surfaces which could otherwise have been matte and dull. u