Matter

Birch Park House

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

BIRCH PARK HOUSE

Matter

ARCHITECTS
Matter

CLIENTS
S& T Nicholls

CONSULTANTS
Bespoke Interior Design

PHOTOGRAPHS
Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

AREA
680 m²

YEAR
2019

LOCATION
Auckland, New Zealand

CATEGORY
House

Text description provided by architect.

Our clients envisioned the project as a generational home, for their own children, grandparents, and greater family in general.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

It was important to incorporate and interpret aspects of Chilean and Japanese design philosophies into the project.

After much collaboration and iteration, the home was resolved as a series of pavilions, interlocking with the landscape, allowing the site to flow through the built forms.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

Increasing the length of the building envelope and threshold the floor plan remains simple programmatically while creating many experientially unique and flexible spaces.

The lower levels have been settled into the land, reflected materially with the use of Petersen bricks as the cladding.

These hand made bricks maintain a human feel and scale, detailed to create solid, continuous planes both inside and out.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

While at the entranceway the wall planes are almost continuous, this deprivation of the view dissolves as you move within the home, the bricks reducing to small wing walls set between joinery.

Above the brick ‘base’ walls are rich timber-clad forms containing the more private family spaces.

Using Shou Sugi Ban to treat the exterior timber added texture and detail, creating a velvet cloak, the soft timber full of warmth and texture.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

In collaboration with our clients and the very talented team from 'Bespoke Interior Design', the kitchen, bathrooms.

And interiors were developed using contrast and layering, highlighting the strength and beauty of each element and material.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

Concrete and timber providing the backdrop, green marble with smoked timber cabinetry, rich walnut against white marble, organic linens & paper lanterns with steel balustrades.

The Kitchen and bathroom designs were deceptively simple in shape creating elemental carved blocks of both dark emerald green and white stone.

Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring

The selected colours mirroring the natural landscape in the stunning vistas beyond.


Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring


Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring
Birch Park House
© Simon Devitt & Jackie Meiring


Birch Park House
Plans
Birch Park House
Plans
Birch Park House
Plans
Birch Park House
Elevations


Birch Park House
Elevations
Birch Park House
Elevations


Birch Park House
Sections
Birch Park House
Sections
Birch Park House
Sections

Matter
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Matter
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