Set within pioneering territory, this modestly sized Glenorchy retreat has its foundations in kinship grounded in the past, celebrated in the present and steering towards the future.
There’s something to be said for relationships forged at university: the way the visceral excitement of emerging adulthood establishes friendships based on the raw essence of a person. Ex-pat Kiwi designer Megan Norgate and technology professor Ellie Rennie met in those days and spent holidays together immersed in the awesome alpine landscape around Glenorchy. Fast-forward through the years and when Ellie and her New Zealand-born partner Jason Potts envisioned a very specific holiday retreat in the Rees Valley, they knew Megan would get where they were coming from.
A tramping hut. That was one immediate reference point. Or a Swiss chalet. That was another. Nothing grand or glass-boxy. Rather, somewhere warm, durable and deferent to the wild beauty. Megan and Joanne Nataprawira (her co-principal at Melbourne’s Brave New Eco studio) soaked in the stories the couple told of finding four hectares at the foot of the Richardson Range. How they hacked through blackberry, scrambled over fallen trees, waded across creeks, discovering it and an unliveable tumbledown cottage inch by hard-won inch.
In time, a road and culverts were built of schist gathered from the land. They installed a bridge to traverse the running waters, then eked out a small building platform between tousled foliage with a 360-degree panorama.
“Ellie was obsessed with the gabled forms of the local vernacular,” explains Megan. “But she also loved European, cold-climate architecture.” The double-volume, one-bedroom dwelling that emerged draws on both cues, in a home that feels both ancient and contemporary. Familiar and unexpected. Compact and generous. Getting the pitch and height of the single gable right was crucial to a successful outcome. As Megan describes it, “It’s like a small cabin scaled up or a barn-style building shrunk to two-thirds.” “It’s human scale inside,” adds Jo. “Not overwhelming.”
Although the schist cladding was a bit of a late call — with copper the initial idea — it works in several ways, leaning into regional history, softening the shape into the backdrop and setting up a structural precedent that drove a bigger design issue. “When we swapped to stone, we had to reduce the number of windows,” says Megan. “But it did leave us with those beautiful deep walls.”
Beyond the low-key entry door, spaces expand to evoke the grandeur of Northern Hemisphere mountain retreats, but material choices are anchored in the local. Working remotely from Australia, with on-the-ground input from builder Joe Daly from ModBox and architectural documentation by DK Architecture, the pair chose a palette that sets up a dialogue between ruggedness and refinement. Green-beige limestone with an almost coppery patina on the floor teams with clay-lime plastered walls and ceilings wrapped in Southland maple beech in a roughsawn finish. The timber continues to a datum at the top of the joinery and wraps into the upper reveal of the windows and doors.
Beneath these pitched ceilings, which lend a sense of intimacy, the single mezzanine bedroom is accessed via a spiral fan of steel. It all looks completely in harmony now, but the staircase was one element that caused a little shifting — physically and mentally. “It was tricky with compliance, fitting it in beneath the roof pitch with the head height you need,” explains Megan.
The kitchen, too, was a source of some anxiety. Made up of Shaker-style cabinets in solid oak, it was just what Ellie wanted. She’d set her heart on it. But the company in Tauranga where the modules were manufactured was ceasing operations. The team made a call and ordered all the cabinetry for the kitchen, bathroom and laundry right there and then — one of the last orders through. It sat, stored in a Southland shed for two years, while the project progressed. “The modular system gave us some flexibility — a bit of rearranging made the components work,” explains Jo.
The warm, handcrafted nature of the cabinetry lends authenticity to the design. Open a cupboard door and the material integrity remains unchanged. Ellie was pleased to assuage her copper fixation in benchtops, a splashback and solid-copper tapware imported from Australia. In the bathroom, her vision of “bathing in a forest” is realised. Conceived as an amenities block, with four separate rooms for two WCs, a shower, laundry and a second shower accessible from the outside, it works for when just Ellie and Jason are in residence, or for gatherings where friends and family stay over in a little wooden cabin nearby or pitch a tent. “The pebble tiles in the shower always make me think of the nearby riverbeds and their round green river stones,” says Ellie.
Transforming everyday tasks into ritual is the secret of this “magic cabin”. Waking the morning after a storm, Jason lingers to listen to the gentle roar of a waterfall perfectly framed by a window that looks out to Paradise Valley. Days may be spent solo or in a gang of friends laying schist pathways and patios to tame the immediate surrounds, with each side of the house offering a different vista. On summer afternoons, the doors to the living room peel back to welcome the mountains, as Ellie bakes bread on the cast-iron wood burner. On winter evenings, muddy boots flung onto flagstone floors, in front of the fire is a cosy place to play cards or board games or watch the snow fall in sheltered comfort.
Designing a retreat so rooted in place from across the Tasman had its moments: “It was a bit nerve-wracking as we are so used to being right there on site,” says Megan. But with friendship as a foundation, trust and instinct have created an architecture that feels robust and ready to foster connection to each other and to the landscape they all love.
Words Claire McCall
Photography Anna McLeod
The post A Glenorchy retreat built on a university friendship, by Brave New Eco appeared first on Homestyle.
