A Protective Veil – DNA House by Crosson Architects

Combining the genetic codes of its clients, through a decoding and patterning process, DNA House is wrapped in the ultimate expression of personalisation. Crosson Architects envelops the remote rural home in a veil that protects and dampens incoming light and winds, while offering a sense of privacy and enclosure in such an exposed siting.

Burrowed into the coastal surrounds of Otama, in the Coromandel Peninsula, DNA House is cloaked in its own protective shield as it sits secondary to the engulfing landscape. The occasional home, inspired by its location, is imagined as a place to recharge and retreat from the urban alternative, and its elevation above the below vegetation reinforces a position of observation. As a front to its location, the home is robust and low maintenance, holding up with strength and durability to its prevailing winds and abrasive coastal conditions. Crosson Architects combines the need for protection with the abstract and expressive, creatively proposing a new language.

From inside looking out through openings in the patterned metal screen, the intent is to feel removed from the elements, while also being well amongst them.

Built by Percival Construction, DNA House is conceived from a place of contrast. On the one hand, its bold and blackened outer shell presents as an imposing division, however, once inside a feeling of warmth and protective embrace takes over. From inside looking out through openings in the patterned metal screen, the intent is to feel removed from the elements, while also being well amongst them. The bi-folding surrounding screen allows filtered light inward and when open frames generous view of the coast. With the screen fully open, the home drinks in the landscape and the glass balustrades ensure a blurring of boundaries between the built and the natural.

Extending the meandering experience of approaching the home from both the beach and the road, movement in and around the home takes on similar sensibilities of journey. The softening of transitions sees the act of moving upward laid in a gentle fashion through both steps and ramps, imitating the natural. While the upper level opens up as a shared living, dining and kitchen space, spilling out onto its deck, the lower level is deliberately more recessive, accommodating the more passive acts of sleeping and bathing. A similar dark and warming palette expressed externally extends inward, with timber as the main finish, wrapping from the flooring up the walls and encasing the ceilings in some cases, where a hatch opens to accommodate stargazing at night.

A similar dark and warming palette expressed externally extends inward, with timber as the main finish wrapping from the flooring up the walls and encasing the ceilings in some cases, where a hatch opens to accommodate stargazing at night.

DNA House aims to reinterpret the personalisation of architecture and in the formation of its shielding screen, Crosson Architects has creating a unique and identifiable destination, befitting of its removed site.