Irving Smith Architects

House with Villa Silhouette

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds

HOUSE WITH VILLA SILHOUETTE

Irving Smith Architects

ARCHITECTURE
Irving Smith Architects

LOCATION
Lyttelton, New Zealand

CATEGORY
Houses

AREA
182.0 m2

PROJECT YEAR
2015

PHOTOGRAPHS
Patrick Reynolds

MANUFACTURERS
Colorsteel, Herman Pacific, Resene

Text description provided by architect.

A house after the Christchurch quakes. One creative home comes down, another goes up, the new silhouetting the old, reminding, resettling, providing lineage.

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds
House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds

Where the former villa sat square and inward, the new layers out across the southern view, shaping to the silhouette for light, and framing a greater appreciation of the everyday.

Timber traces the silhouette of the old house, providing warmth, and privacy by opening and closing the view, finding sun and shelter on a south facing shadowed and exposed site, and layering ways in and out amongst its close neighbours.

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds
House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds
House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds

That the house is hard to recognise from afar, but remains open to its close community, is testament to the notion of resettling with surrounding context, ideas we exhibited at the 2015 Prague International Architecture Festival entitled Soft Architecture : Soft Context.

House with Villa Silhouette is finished as a moment in time, yet looks to its neighbours for future re-finishing.

It is soft and participates with a landscape that continues to shift both physically and as a community.

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds
House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds

To its artists owners', the house provides an affordable continuation in lieu of their much loved but earthquake destroyed villa; a place of craft, creativity, and lineage through the earthquakes.

Post quake, they find renewed interest in small things: hanging a pot plant, drying a wetsuit, making tracks for the cat to walk on, an interest in 1970’s aesthetics.

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds
House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds

Frames are left to provide opportunity for future play, adaption, new endeavours, change. Post-quake time has become more continuous.

Life goes on, remaining (like Lyttleton) modest, informal, busy, and full of the same eclectic furniture and stories as before... but resettled and ready for more.

House with Villa Silhouette
© Patrick Reynolds


House with Villa Silhouette
Site Plans
House with Villa Silhouette
Floor Plans


House with Villa Silhouette
Schemes
House with Villa Silhouette
Schemes


House with Villa Silhouette
Section

Irving Smith Architects
T +64 3 5481372
Irving Smith Architects
96 Collingwood Street, Nelson 7010, New Zealand