Consciously Responsive – Oliver’s Ridge by Team Green Architects

Nostalgically linked to its unique site, Oliver’s Ridge is an exercise in sustainable and passive housing that fully embraces its surrounding abundant landscape and enviable vistas. Team Green Architects combines principles of restraint with extended rigour to propose a home that is responsive, consciously health-driven and energy efficient.

Imbedded amongst one of the most plentiful and scenic locations, Oliver’s Ridge is located in Speargrass Flat, just outside the old mining precinct of Arrowtown in New Zealand’s South Island. With views of the nearby Remarkable mountain ranges and Gibbston Valley vineyards, the home’s siting offers an array of diverse and ever-changing landscapes, as the seasons pass throughout the year. At the core is a dedication to being both responsive and respectful of its site, designed through understanding of its context and through the development of strategies to live harmoniously alongside and with the many attributing aspects of its affecting extreme climate. Team Green Architects employs a holistic approach where all contributing elements add to the comfort and passivity of the home and its independence from outside energy sources. Through considered materiality, form and orientation, the resulting home emerges as self-sufficient and consciously dedicated to the minimising its impact and to enhancing the health of its occupants.

To ensure minimal energy use, the home integrates principles of concealment through airtightness, balanced heat exchange ventilation and increased thermal mass through highly insulated walls to create a comfortable lived experience within the home.

Anchored to its site, Oliver’s Ridge is both weighted and open in opposing areas, orienting itself to the ideal outlook to avoid unwanted thermal gains and to capitalise on those most advantageous. Responding to the area’s extreme climatic conditions, the structure is located on a natural crest of a hill to ensure both minimal interruption to the site and a natural protection and grounding. To ensure minimal energy use, the home integrates principles of concealment through airtightness, balanced heat exchange ventilation and increased thermal mass through highly insulated walls to create a comfortable lived experience within the home. These measures ensure reduced costs of outside energy, noise reduction, increased indoor air quality and an evenly distributed temperature throughout.

Home to a young family returning from having lived in Australia for some years, the resolve was to create a home that adapts through flexibility over time. Internally, an emphasis is placed on a balanced sense of flow and encouraged movement, and the open living, kitchen and dining space is the ideal facilitator. At the top level sits the master suite with 360-degree views of the surrounds. The use of warm and local materials reflects a further embrace of its context and sees timber, Corten steel, concrete and masonry elements frame large spans of glass to consume the view. Underlying the selections was a sense of endurance and robustness, which would allow a natural weathering and patina overtime without compromising integrity.

The use of warm and local materials reflects a further embrace of its context and sees timber, Corten steel, concrete and masonry elements frame large spans of glass to consume the view.

A home imagined to withstand the unforgiving elements, Oliver’s Ridge sits hugging its site with purpose and carves an ideal outlook from within. Team Green Architects has conjured a calming sanctuary that responds with both an appreciation of its positioning and a future-focused heart, relying on little outside to maintain its own comfort.