Scenic Drive

_Words Melinda Williams
Photography Simon Devitt_

Faced with a choice of hills on which to place a new golf clubhouse, Patterson Associates simply decided to put a hole in one.

Cresting out from a rolling hillside, the clubhouse at the new Michael Hill-owned Hills Golf Course in Queenstown is a spectacular wedge of concrete and schist that morphs seamlessly into the landscape. But as impressive as the soaring, cantilevered, grassed roof, sweeping main stair and gleaming curtain of windows are, it’s the parts you don’t immediately see that make the building really extraordinary.

Apart from Scotland (the original home of golf), no country has more courses per capita than New Zealand, so creating something memorable was always going to take more than the Remarkable location of the course.

For inspiration, Patterson Associates turned to the practice’s driving concept: appurtuancy. It’s a slightly ungainly word that hides an elegant concept: ‘natural fit’, or inherent connection to the whole. And in this case, both logic and emotion dictated that the right solution for The Hills was a clubhouse that literally sank into the landscape of the course.

Michael Hill came to the architecture studio with a one-line brief: he wanted people to leave the course reflecting not only on their golfing experience, but also on their experience of the clubhouse. “After long discussions with Michael, we discovered that this could be distilled down to the relationship between the design and the game of golf being played on the course,” Andrew Patterson explains. “Michael wanted the building to be an experience in its own right but not one that compromised or competed with the play. He wanted a design that amplified the experience of the course and vice versa.”

Queenstown is famous for its stringent rules restricting buildings from interfering with the area’s spectacular views. Working with course designer John Darby, Patterson narrowed down the possible sites for the clubhouse to just two that would meet the council and the course requirements. “Practicality meant that in order for the building to be easy to use, it should be located between the first and 18th fairways. There was no space between the first and the 18th, but there was some space around them. We narrowed it down to two sites – one had a really good view of Lake Hayes from the top of a hill, and the other was sunken down behind some trees. As good as the view of Lake Hayes was from the first site, it was the second that promised the strongest relationship to the golfing experience. People are there for the golf, You can get lovely views of Lake Hayes from all over the district. On the less obvious site, the whole building could form a grandstand over the 18th green, and give it a sense of theatre.”

At its core, the game of golf is about the relationship of player, ball and landscape. and the site chosen places the clubhouse near the centre of the property, with the course spiraling in a clockwise direction around the building. But putting it in such a central position meant the integration of the 15,000 square foot building into the landscape was even more critical. Considering the possibilities, Pattersons hit on the idea of burying two-thirds of the building. “By placing the building largely underground, your eye just drifts over the building; there’s no extra node in the landscape,” says Patterson. “And so we were able to maintain the players’ and spectators’ enjoyment of the landscape, and maximize their enjoyment of the game. People tend to look at photos of the building and think it’s quite small, but it’s actually very big. It’s deeply underground.”

Patterson Associates test any concept by its ability to make sense of a brief with an elegant and logical solution. For them, a beautiful concept solves multiple design challenges simply and simultaneously. For example, all the necessary excavating equipment was already right there on site. “Earthmoving is what golf course construction and design is all about,” says Patterson. “So it fitted with the concept to use the infrastructure that was already there.” Interring a large part of the building meant that the more prosaic aspects of golf course management – the storage and recharging systems for the golf carts, service areas and locker rooms – could all be neatly concealed alongside the subterranean colour therapy spa. Most golf clubhouses don’t include such extravagances, but as home to the New Zealand Open, The Hills has to cater to a small but discerning year-round membership, as well as a huge, international-level annual event. With no retail aspect, the main member spaces – the bar, restaurant, spa and locker rooms – feel more like a private home than a public space.

“Usually the clubhouse is a private spectator box for small groups of people,” says Patterson. “And then the Open happens, and that grand stair and courtyard turns into the welcoming space for a village of Marques, which stretches up the 18thfairway above the building.”

The clubhouse is built predominantly in glass-reinforced concrete and local river schist pre-cast aggregate, with double-glazed, frameless windows. Queenstown’s extreme temperature range mean the building needed to withstand both searing Central Otago summers, and snow-clad winters. Most of the work is done by the impressive suspended glass-reinforced concrete roof, under which the rest of the building is recessed. “In Queenstown, you can’t play golf over the three deepest months of winter” Patterson explains. “The roof is designed to carry a two-metre snowload; it weighs 60 tonnes, as much as a jumbo jet and it’s really a warm building because of the insulating characteristics of the roof.”

The building also adheres to commendable standards for environment friendliness – although no New Zealand ‘green-star’ category currently exists for any buildings except office buildings, by international standards, the building is ‘five green star’ rated. “It’s all double-glazed and heated with bio-diesel,” says Patterson. “It’s self-sufficient and self-sustainable. All the sewage is processed on site, and the water comes out of the site. It all grows out of making the building part of the landscape. If you’re going to have a building that looks like it is part of the land, it kind of flows that rather than relying on introduced energy it should harness as much as possible, the energy embodied in that landscape.”

The interior of the building was also designed by Patterson Associates, with contributions from Michael Hill and his wife, Christine. The colour and material palette was keep minimal: sparkling schist walls and floors, wood-lined changing rooms, and black-and-white classic modernist furniture. A golf ball ‘dimple’ motif carries right through the building, featuring in ceiling and wall panels, as well as mirrors. Solid shapes, such at the bar, take what Patterson Associates describe as a “wedge” shape, continuing the golfing metaphor. Even the curving edge at the top of the main stair has a rounded shape reminiscent of the edge of a sand trap. In fact, the entire clubhouse is a bunker of sorts – unlike most clubhouses, this one is not ‘out of bounds’. If the ball strays onto the clubhouse you just play it from the roof.

“Seeing the building in operation as the VIP grandstand during last year’s New Zealand Open was a wonderful experience,” says Patterson. “It was the ‘organiser’ of the whole layout and that was very nice for our team. It was great to see the building working.” It’s another masterstroke for Patterson Associates, we say.