Dune House

Situated along the Te Arai coastline, the project engages directly with the stratified conditions of site—coastal, forested, and geologic. Set within a hectare of rolling dunes, the intervention is conceived less as an object placed on the landscape and more as a calibrated response to topography, orientation, and ecological exposure. The terrain oscillates between the openness of the Pacific Ocean and the containment of an inland pine forest—a field of vertically silhouetted lines. The architectural strategy is one of excavation, anchoring, and alignment. Rammed earth, extracted and compacted on-site, forms a series of retaining and enclosing walls that both hold and shape the ground. These elements read as geological insertions, revealing the site’s material underpinning—its stratification, texture, and tone. They establish a tectonic language rooted in the land itself, where the building is not so much constructed upon the site as drawn out from it. A continuous concrete floor plane negotiates interior and exterior seamlessly—operating as both surface and datum for the main living level. Above, a post-tensioned roof structure cantilevers over large glazed openings, creating deep overhangs that extend the architecture outward while framing long, horizontal views across the landscape. The roof’s extension reasserts the horizon line, stabilising the composition in contrast to the shifting dunes and sea. The plan is organised along a diagonal axis that mediates between the orthogonal logic of the roof form and the irregular morphology of the landform. Circulation is choreographed as a spatial gradient—from compression to release, from enclosure to openness. Two primary apertures define the lower level: one opening toward the coastal edge, the other recessed into a courtyard carved from the dune, offering containment and a framed reading of forest and sky. These moves articulate a dual condition of prospect and refuge, offering space to retreat into and environments in which to dwell within this layered landscape. Central to the plan, a sculptural stair acts as a vertical pivot, linking the subterranean base to the elevated main floor. The upper level houses the primary program in a reduced, ambient series of volumes. Here, architecture becomes backdrop to site—a temporal register of occupation rather than a dominant form. The building remains legible as both intervention and artefact—open to erosion, embedded in time, and in quiet dialogue with the forces that shaped its ground.