Lofted Lightness – Redcliffs House by Lume Design and Site Architecture

Reflecting a lightness to align with its coastal positioning, Redcliffs House draws on its surrounding context and an environmentally conscious approach. Lume Design and Site Architecture focus on a relaxed air of casualness and calm to propose the idyllic and dramatically lofted home.

 Overlooking the coast, and navigating its steeply sloping site, Redcliffs House sits as an embrace of its surrounds, while instilling a familiar sense of calm and stillness to match its location. The home spreads over multiple levels and is encased in a grey-toned timber sleeve, allowing and encouraging a muted patina over time from the coastal winds. Large and generous glazing elements then sit reaching high into the gabled form, allowing each of the internal spaces to be filled with natural light, further enhanced through the light neutral palette used internally. With architecture by Site Architecture and interior design and styling by Lume Design, the resulting home feels classically proportioned and light, both in colouring and how it resonates.

Bringing that same sense of calm internally, light layers are combined with textured features, and sit along linear and smooth elements, creating a natural balance of the comprising parts.

Built by Fowler Homes, together with landscape design by Kamo Marsh, Redcliffs House combines a traditional coastal approach, elevated through attentive detailing, and refined through its lofted proportions. Consistent throughout is the use of black painted steel elements that both frame and add a structured insertion throughout and break up the use of layered neutral elements. The palette is inspired by its surrounds, and looks to the natural for inspiration, with a clear focus on outward views. Bringing that same sense of calm internally, light layers are combined with textured features, and sit along linear and smooth elements, creating a natural balance of the comprising parts.

Sensitive in its approach, the formal methodology takes cues from the vernacular of a jetty and how it reaches out toward the ocean, while the pitched roof forms reference the nearby Port Hills.  The use of a lighter and refined palette connects to a contemporary urban home, and the use of natural layers then connects to a sense of place. Throughout, the base palette allows the owner to showcase collected treasures as an act of self-expression and as the representation of a storied life. The reminder of the home’s location flooding in from each opening, however, becomes the uniquely identifiable feature of the home, firmly planting it in place with purpose.

As the second home to its owner, a feeling of escape was integral and needed to be captured from the entrance, and then reinforced throughout.

Redcliffs House is an embodiment of coastal calm, reinforced through visual connections. Lume Design and Site Architecture have together created an immersive experience in place, elevated through the heightening of details and a rigorous approach.