Inside the 2026 Home of the Year - Eastbourne House

The house is located in Eastbourne, which is a small coastal village which looks out across Wellington Harbour to the city. It is situated at the base of a very, very steep bush-covered slope. The weather, as people know in Wellington, can be pretty wild, but the building is nestled into a kind of a fold in the landscape, and that gives it incredible protection from the howling southerly, and it's in a kind of a wooden shadow, you might say. Our clients were looking for a family home. They wanted a sanctuary. It was for them and their three kids and their dog, but they wanted a building which was private, a little bit sort of removed from the street, and they wanted something interesting. They wanted something a bit exciting. Although the site could be considered difficult, really difficult sites really require an inventive design solution. We saw the form of this house a little bit like an angular rock that's been weathered by the elements. The edges are curved off, and the roof terrace is hollowed out like a cave, so it's very much like if you took a block of stone and you carved it into a sculpture. You ascend this driveway, which takes you sort of to a higher point in the house, and enables you to then enter through the undercroft, and then wind up this helical spiral staircase. And as you ascend that stair and you pass the sleeping level, you move from the darkness of the earth up towards the light of the living area. It's almost a spiritual experience. The main living room, which is a double-eyed space, opens onto this extensive deck, and the deck is not one of these decks which hangs out in space and is exposed, but it's more of a cocooned space, a bit cave-like. It feels like it's got its arms around the sides protecting you from the wind, and it's got this extraordinary view out over the harbour. The key initial design decision for the house was to build up on the steep part of the slope, and this was to gain the benefit of this extraordinary view over the harbour. This had the added benefit of creating a lawn and a private garden and a swimming pool within the flat part of the site. The exterior of the house is clad in a glazed black terracotta. Extremely hard-wearing, low-maintenance, but it's also brilliant in the fact that its module allowed it to take on the curves and the nuances of the form. The dark exterior gives way to a much lighter interior. Blonded oak floors and ceilings, white painted walls, give the interior a light and airy feel. For the kitchen, we worked closely with Catalogue to create a systemised and modulised kitchen approach, with a very bespoke custom island bench which is the real centrepiece to the dining and kitchen area. The materiality and form of this element echo the exterior form and shape of the house. The bathrooms have been carefully designed to be calm and serene, very sculptural and soothing spaces to be in. The upper level lounge has a distinct quality in that it's less about the sea view and more about opening to the bush and the landscape behind the house, very different to the rest of the forward-facing rooms of the building. This lounge also features an amazing circular skylight, a sundial for the very uppermost space. As a child my father would bring me to Wellington and we would go and look at these extraordinary houses built on these very steep sites, and I loved their inventiveness, I loved their adventurousness, and it was something about the power of the imagination that inspired a young child, and to be able to come back to Wellington and to be able to engage in such a project was a deeply moving and satisfying experience.