Creating a place for people to reconnect with each other and nature, Patterson Associates built a cabin that sits upon the New Zealand landscape with advantageous coastal views. Located on a working sheep and cattle farm on the Banks Peninsula, Scrubby Bay is extremely remote. The cabin home is architectural in its design and faces straight into the sub-Antarctic weather that comes in from the bay and down the mountains. Moreso, due to the home’s location, there is a wide variety of wildlife, including an array of birds, dolphins and whales.
Faced with the decision of what to design and how to design it, the architect was drawn to building a residence that responded to the site. Moreover, seen in the house tour of the cabin is the bay, which tends to be covered in driftwood. This helped influence the architect on choosing the unique materials and timber for the project.
Designed to age and get better with time, Scrubby Bay is laid out as two simple gabled barn forms that are slotted together. Specifically arranged for families or large groups renting off Airbnb, the house can accommodate up to 16 people and encourages them to come together and experience the natural landscape. Three main bedrooms have been created for the adults and spread throughout the gabled form of the home. Additionally, seen in the house tour, at each side of the home are two gathering areas, one being an entertainment deck facing the ocean and the other is a pool facing the rear mountains. As the cabin tour progresses, the middle of the home is revealed, where a living space has been placed as a central gathering spot. The home also offers unparalleled views from the rear mountains and out to the ocean making for a picturesque Airbnb stay.
Due to the home’s farm location, as well as being out in the open to face the harsh elements of the bay, the house needed to be robust. The cabin also had to feel good for people to walk around in gumboots should they need. Moreover, the home’s materials had to be shipped in via small trucks from Christchurch, the nearest city, and construction of the home was stopped and restarted due to the weather, sheep season and the remote location. Using materials that were found around the farm, the architect built the house out of timber, including driftwood employed throughout the interior design of the home. The centrepiece of the main living space is a stone fireplace – built from rocks found at the nearby remote rock quarry – that separates living, dining and kitchen spaces. The interior design of the home features many bespoke elements including decor, fabrics and lighting. Intrinsically placed upon the landscape as if it is a part of it, Scrubby Bay is more than just a uniquely remote place to stay but a place to connect to the coastal landscape and with each other.
00:00 - Introduction to the Remote Cabin 01:16 - The History of the Landscape 02:13 - An Insight into the Design Inspiration 03:02 - The Layout of the Cabin 03:57 - Approaching the Bay 05:02 - The Respectful Construction Process 05:30 - A Robust Material Palette 06:31 - The Functionalities of the Cabin 07:23 - A Sustainable Approach to the Build
For more from The Local Production: Instagram – / thelocalproduction_ Website – https://thelocalproduction.com.au/ LinkedIn – / thelocalproduction To subscribe to The Local Project's tri-annual print publication see here – https://thelocalproject.com.au/subscr... Photography by Sam Hartnett. Architecture by Patterson Associates. Build by Hoogervorst Builders. Engineering by Arthur Tyndall. Developed by Annandale. Filmed and edited by O&Co. Homes. Production by The Local Production.
Location: Annandale, Akaroa, New Zealand
The Local Project acknowledges Māori as tangata whenua and Treaty of Waitangi partners in Aotearoa New Zealand. We recognise the importance of Indigenous peoples in the identity of our respective countries and continuing connections to Country and community. We pay our respect to Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Indigenous people of these lands.
Any good building combines lots of separate ideas into one whole thing.
And this one combines the idea of being a temporary installation on the landscape
and also a connection to the history, the human history of the bay in its very simple rural forms.
I'm Andrew Patterson. I'm an architect and I work for Patterson Associates.
And the name of this project is Scrubby Bay.
And it's located on a big 7,000 hectare station on New Zealand's Banks Peninsula.
The farm was cleared in the late 1800s but the land itself is a lot older.
I think the Shield volcano came up about a million years ago and that's when this bay here was formed.
The bay itself is a symmetrical amphitheatre. It's extremely remote and it's extremely architectural.
And it faces straight down into the sub-antarctic weather.
And there's a lot of wildlife here. There's hundreds of types of birds.
There's whales, there's dolphins that swim in the bay.
As well as all the introduced animals and farm animals on the station itself.
Once you kind of get to grips with building here it becomes a question of what and how.
And the spot that you naturally gravitate to is right in the centre like any opera singer on a
stage. And the landscape here is made up of a whole holistic sense of place. The weather that
comes through. Today is a very misty morning and the hills and the cliffs and the rock formations
but there's also the other parts of the landscape that are more temporary.
And this bay is a repository for driftwood but it comes and goes and we decided that we would
build a timber house. And like a piece of driftwood this house is designed to age and get better with
time. So the layout of the house is made up of two simple gabled barn forms that have been
slotted together. It's designed for families, large families because the house will accommodate
16 people, to come together and share an experience of this landscape.
There are three master bedrooms for the more adult members of the family
and those are spread through those gabled forms, one on each end. And on each side of the gabled
forms is the ocean side deck and the ocean side swimming pool deck. And then there's a coming
together place in the middle which on a beautiful day all the doors can be pushed back on both sides
and you can enjoy the resonance of this place. Annandale is a working sheep and cattle station
but for us the essence of the history of the place is in the historical farm buildings that
you pass coming to this remote desolate spot. And those buildings are simple gabled forms that's
whirled over. So we thought that using that simple shape of the monopoly piece would be the least
intrusive way to approach the bay. The weather is harsh, the environment is very unforgiving
and it's a farm so the building had to be robust. That means more than just simply strong, it needed
to feel good in gumboots. And logistically everything had to be shipped in and trucked in
with small four-wheel drive trucks from the nearest city Christchurch which is three hours away.
Construction was also intermittent on this site, not only because of the weather but because of the
nature cycle on the farm. We had to stop for lambing season in the two-year build twice
and we had to stop for the high dry summer because of the fire risk in the farm. And of course in
winter the tracks got so muddy that we couldn't build. So it was an adventure to get a building
here in the first place. This is a farm building and we wanted it to be robust and we wanted to
use the materials in the landscape. It's a driftwood house and the interior of this
piece of driftwood is exactly the same. It's made out of knotted macrocarpa.
All of the handles and the detailing is in the same timber. Even the floor is in the much the
same style and timber. There's a centrepiece of a hearth and everything is bespoke in the house.
The lighting is bespoke, the fabrics are bespoke and the experience of building it. The craftsmen
who come, who harvest the macrocarpa on the land, who chip the rock out of the farm quarry,
who provide the furnishings out of local materials and flax. The whole experience
of building creates a human connection and bond in its own right.
So with any coastal house you get onshore and offshore breezes.
So this house opens both to the inland shale volcano and out to the open ocean horizon
and has living areas on both sides. The house kind of forms a lens that you can look through
but on those beautiful clear blue sky days you could be out in the frontage
in the heat of the summer sun. So the opportunity
to move with the weather is an intrinsic part of moving in the landscape.
So this is a kind of optimistic belief that people and therefore their buildings
and their expression can be a natural part of the planet as well. The main way this building
fights that good fight is it uses timber. It uses embodied carbon to form its enclosure.
So trees take the carbon out of the air and they modify that through the energy of sunlight
into wood. So the more trees and wood we have the better it is and this house celebrates that
use of timber. It's our hope that the house acts as a bridge facilitating and helping people to
feel like they naturally belong here in the landscape as well. They're a natural part of
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