Nurturing an Openness to Nature – Cascata House by Gary Todd Architecture

A home that embraces biophilic architecture principles, Cascata House nurtures its proximity and openness to nature. Gary Todd Architecture combines a contemporary approach to materiality and form while encouraging a connection to the house’s surrounds.

An occasional home, Cascata Home sits on a steeply sloping site in Queenstown. In contrast to the client’s urban abode, the approach was to conjure a home that would embrace the best aspects of the site and create a fully immersive experience through an openness to nature. Overlooking its enviable views, aspects take in both The Remarkables mountain ranges and Lake Wakatipu in all their combined glories, capturing their changes across the seasons. Gary Todd Architecture draws on the principles of biophilic architecture together with a contemporary approach to propose the ideal foundations of a place of both respite and entertainment.

An occasional home, Cascata Home sits on a steeply sloping site in Queenstown.

Optimising the incredible surrounding views, large floor-to ceiling-glazed walls encase the built form and create immediate visual connections and reminders of the home’s location. Spread over four levels, Cascata House is designed to accommodate up to twelve people, with extended outdoor terraces to allow a free flow from inside and out. The form sits emerging from the rock formations deliberately, and (as the name suggests), it cascades down the site allowing uninterrupted views from all aspects. The combined use of natural elements and a contrasting black and white palette mean the focus is on the outside, with minimal distractions.

Gary Todd Architecture draws on the principles of biophilic architecture together with a contemporary approach to propose the ideal foundations of a place of both respite and entertainment.

At the core of biophilic living is a sensory engagement with the natural, and in each space, there is a deliberate opportunity for stimulation of smell, sight, sound and touch. From its entry court to the open rooftop, each zone interacts with nature in some way. Through the centre of the home, the lift and stair core creates its own light well. The operable elements within this core also allow for ventilation to be brought through the centre, creating natural vertical and horizontal flows. The internal vertical garden and the purpose-built waterfall that makes its way internally offer relaxing and meditative qualities and a connection to living elements.

Cascata House is imagined as both a permeable and private building. Through shuttered timber concrete walls, sightlines are directional and offer a sense of escape, while still feeling directly connected to the outdoor entertaining areas of the home. Through gestures of openness and delicate concealment, Gary Todd Architecture has created a home that truly embraces its unique site, retaining a sense of the wildness of the surrounding landscape while offering familiar contemporary comforts.

Through gestures of openness and delicate concealment, Gary Todd Architecture has created a home that truly embraces its unique site, retaining a sense of the wildness of the surrounding landscape while offering familiar contemporary comforts.