Double Courtyard House
Nestled unobtrusively amid the dunes, this coastal New Zealand home by Roberts Gray Architects hides a secret at its heart – two, in fact.
Sculpted by both wind and tide, the rolling dunes of Te Arai, north of Auckland, are lovely from a distance but only reveal greater layers of beauty and complexity on closer inspection. The same could be said of Double Courtyard House by Roberts Gray Architects, a project that is deceptively simple – but only at first glance.
Following the contours of the grassy dunes, the dwelling was designed to embrace the beauty of its location – which is in the process of being rewilded from pine forest to native dune-scape – while also providing a solution to its challenges. “It’s a really harsh and exposed coastal environment,” says architect and director Nick Roberts. Working within this salt- and wind-whipped site inspired an innovative solution by the Roberts Gray team: two interlocked pavilions, each set around an internal courtyard.
With the double pavilion design, this is a home of two faces and two distinct moods – the rear section, designated as the sleeping pavilion, is private, quiet and tranquil, while the living pavilion is bright, airy and gregarious. The tone of each one is captured by the courtyard at its heart. The sleeping pavilion features a hipped, almost pyramid-style roof, which directs a narrow shaft of illumination into the centre courtyard by landscape designer Jared Lockhart, a zone designed as a fern garden.
“We’ve treated it like a vitrine – it’s encased by glass walls and the light is very low and focused,” says Roberts. Like a forest glade in the middle of the pavilion, this vitrine washes the surrounding spaces in soft, green light, conveying a sense of intimacy and calm.
Entering the home through the front door – after passing through a semi-open transition space – one can appreciate both pavilions. “It’s a really interesting moment in the house where those two qualities come together,” says Roberts. “You have the cool undergrowth of a forest, with the bright light and sea breeze coming through from the front pavilion. You get all the different atmospheres of the house in this one moment of welcome.”
One can choose their own adventure from here, but it’s hard to resist the allure of the airy front pavilion. “Toward the seaward side, the pavilion is far more open and permeable to the wider landscape.” Defined by a crisp and minimalist line cut out of the flat roof, the courtyard here does far more than set a mood – it becomes a usable extension of the living spaces, which are laid around it in a ring and open easily to both this central space and the surrounding decks for maximum functionality. With the unpredictability of the weather and the desirability of outdoor living in this exquisite corner of the world, this flexibility is an everyday joy. “On a beautiful day, you can open everything up, and if it’s stormy from the ocean, you can close down the glass on the ocean side but open the courtyard and still have the breeze coming through,” says practice director Jimmy Gray. “On the north, off the living room, there’s a sort of terrace, which is covered with a set of sliding screens, so there are all types of habitation to deal with the weather.”
Designed to sit seamlessly within the regenerated dunes – sympathetically shaped and planted by Lockhart – the home’s material palette is chosen to both withstand the harsh conditions of this exposed site and to weather over time. “It needs to wear and age with the dune-scape, to feel like it belongs there and not be this uptight, pristine thing,” says Gray, who describes the palette as “luxurious but honest, soft, texturally rich and warm”.
Visible inside and out, the hero material and core wall element is rammed earth by BioBuild. With its stone-like texture, it looks as though it could have been moulded, sandcastle-style, from the surrounding sand. The layering of the rammed earth is echoed in slabs of travertine – a star material of the kitchen – chosen for its similar striations. Softness has been introduced at every opportunity, in the deliberate imperfections of hand-trowelled plaster, the warm silver tones of the anodised aluminium joinery, eucalypt timbers allowed to grey and stainless-steel cabinetry by Guyco Construction that has been bead-blasted to remove its shine and allow it to patina.
“We contrasted the idea of it being a luxurious home with it being understated,” explains Roberts. “The geometry is very precise but always slightly undone by the way the materials are treated – the steel is bead-blasted, there’s a loose ramming in the earth where you see the aggregate coming through and the concrete is also sandblasted. The precision is always slightly undermined by the natural weathering and exposing of the material.”
This considered palette reflected the client’s brief of barefoot luxury in more ways than one. Designed to improve with age and minimal care, the materials met the client’s desire for a low-maintenance ‘lock up and leave’ home, while the tactility of the palette is a sensory delight that evokes a sense of calm. “A lot of care and craft has been put into little elements that you handle on a daily basis,” says Roberts. “The door pull at the entry, the seat that you sit in when you’ve just arrived, the shape of a handrail – they’re all crafted to add layers of detail. Because it is such an operable house – you are regularly moving screens and doors and shutters – the way you touch the building is really important.”
From the silky tactile surfaces to the breezes whispering across the porous living spaces, Double Courtyard House is an experiential wonder with the multi-sensory appeal of a day at the beach.
