Openfield House by Keshaw McArthur

Set atop a geological shelf in the seemingly untouched landscape of New Zealand’s Queenstown region, an object of pure geometry punctuates the rugged vista.

Designed by Keshaw McArthur, Openfield House manifests as a composition of minimal volumes elegantly nestled in the mountainous terrain. By rejecting distinctions between interior and exterior spaces, the family home exists as a vehicle for living within the awe-inspiring natural context, celebrating an authentic connection to the earth.

“The project distils the notion of ‘the home’, removing complexity and facilitating everyday activities and tasks to occur in an unfussy and honest way,” explains Katrina Keshaw, co-founding director of Keshaw McArthur.

“The project distils the notion of ‘the home’, removing complexity and facilitating everyday activities and tasks to occur in an unfussy and honest way,” explains Katrina Keshaw, co-founding director of Keshaw McArthur. “We talked very early on about retaining the raw energy across the site – the idea of the house being a place of respite, not retreat – akin to lying under a tree for an afternoon.” This understated vision defined the overarching design strategy for a home capable of supporting the varied and frequent comings and goings of an active family, a lifestyle inspired by a love of the outdoors. Alongside an essential consideration for utility and function, critical emphasis was placed on a raw, authentic material palette.

The Crown Range site sits at an altitude of around 700 metres above sea level and is subsequently exposed to highly changeable alpine weather including significant annual snowfall. The trade-off for any adverse weather however is cultivated in the expansive mountainscape with epic views to the valley below. In the warmer seasons, a dry grass encompasses the surrounding field, with the sound of a meandering freshwater stream carrying across the site. The designers chose to engage with the landscape by way of a curated dialogue between organic and inorganic, natural and manmade. The design strategy for Openfield House, Keshaw says, was to provide only the shelter necessary to exist here without negating the powerful energy of the land – based on the poetic idea of “connecting people to their human experience – the body and mind independently and as one.”

The designers chose to engage with the landscape by way of a curated dialogue between organic and inorganic, natural and manmade.

A design process involving collaboration with Jason Whitely of Matheson Whitely allowed for an extensive distillation of conceptual thinking, with continual ongoing dialogue between Auckland and London. The house manifests as a volume of logic, symmetrical in form and efficient in layout. A square plan and corrugated roof references historical structures of the region such as minor’s huts and agricultural structures. A rationalised layout facilitates the opening and closing of interior spaces to suit the needs of the occupants, and a pyramid-like roof form affords visual clarity in the vast landscape, conceptualised as an abstraction of the surrounding mountain peaks. Laid out across a nine-square grid, the ground floor consists of a series of adaptable, interchangeable rooms structured around a central open fireplace. “The plan establishes a continuous field, allowing free movement throughout,” explains Keshaw. Within this ‘field’ are several heavy concrete volumes that anchor the plan and provide moments of stillness across the open spaces. Concealing sliding windows and doors commits to the sense of transparent thresholds and open edges that invite the landscape inwards. Within the void of the roof, a sleeping space provides opportunities to connect to the sky and mountaintops from a higher vantage point. Here, a single gesture – a bold circular aperture – establishes a meaningful and whimsical connection to the exterior.

The beauty of the alpine context can be seen in the texture and tone of the material palette applied across Openfield House. A cohesive integration of natural stone and timber from interior to exterior harbours a sense that this building has always been a permanent fixture of the landscape. A solid concrete mass pushes up from the land as an extension of the rocky terrain, the foundation atop which a collection of cedar boxes huddle under a simple corrugated metal roof. The considered material restraint is in service to an intentional hierarchy of elements – “from early on, there was an approach to the materials and construction based on an abstract notion” says Keshaw. “If the lightweight elements of roof and walls were ever to come down, that which remains would be a ruin of concrete elements rising up from the ground.”

The beauty of the alpine context can be seen in the texture and tone of the material palette applied across Openfield House.

The colour palette was carefully derived from the tones of the surrounding landscape, the efforts of which are most visible in a pigmented concrete featured heavily throughout the project. A desaturated mauve hue was selected as a reference to the colours of the mountains under the atmospheric haze unique to the region and was refined through an iterative process of testing and sampling. Keshaw describes the concrete floors and walls as “one of the most ambitious aspects of the project,” owing to the challenges and complexities of accessing the remote location. “Each batch of concrete brought to site is individually coloured, so consistency is challenging when the desire is to achieve a uniform and highly controlled distribution of colour throughout the house as we did.” The external environment set up the framework for the interior colours, with purple Porphyry stone complementing the concrete floors and walls in the kitchen and bathrooms. For tonal consistency on other surfaces, designer Katie Lockhart collaborated to ensure preciseness.

At its core, Openfield House functions with a utilitarian efficiency in service to the activities of a family accustomed to spending time outdoors. The success of this home, however, is perhaps not defined by the deeply considered floor plan and refined detailing, but rather by its capacity to maintain the sense of immersion within nature, long after the ski boots are hung up or mountain bikes stored away. The key to Openfield House, as Keshaw describes, is in its “essential connection to the earth, nature, our experience of life and the ever-changing present”.

Architecture and interior design by Keshaw McArthur. Concept design by Keshaw McArthur and Matheson Whiteley. Interior design consulting by Katie Lockhart Studio. Build by CDL Building. Landscape design by Jared Lockhart Design. Structural Engineering by Hadley Consultants. Artwork by Renee So, Dan Arps, Emma McIntyre and Milli Jannides.