From the Inside-Out – Feather House by Irving Smith Architects
Layered as it engages with the surrounds, Feather House is imagined as a place for many to gather, add to, and leave their own distinct markings in the process. Irving Smith Architects follows the contours of the site, listening and responding to its varied occupant group, to imagine a destination that is crafted from the inside out.
Hugging its steep site, Feather House sits almost camouflaged by its native surrounds, as it delicately weaves itself into its site. Deliberately so, the residence is conceived from its namesake and aims to lightly layer elements together on site, like feathers, each with their own response and purpose. Outlooks respond to differing views and aspects, while the changing levels of privacy and retreat are crafted through natural approach to materiality and warmth. A home for many, the brief to bring the elements together needed to be open enough to allow an individual connection, while also retaining a sense of the familiar and as an embrace of its enviable location. Irving Smith Architects guides the opening up of the volumes, as the home peers out over Nelson below and, through generous glazing, dutifully welcomes a conversation with the landscape.
In reply to its remoteness, Feather House is an amicable and welcoming home. Built by Simon Murray Builders and owned by a family of makers and builders, the focus and inspiration for the home is on the handmade and ensuring that is felt throughout through detailing and tactile elements. While the structure balances its challenging site, the internal experience and how it is embracing an immersion within such a lush landscape forms the memory of the home. Its layered elements of concrete, timber and glass all form the foundations of the home, while the integrated joinery, furniture and planting add the living element.
Straddling a location somewhere between the urban intensity of a city and the casual calm of the country, the home sits elevated and instead anchored to the land and air. The weighted masonry of the concrete acts as the absorber of heat and is a stabilising gesture within the home, while lighter weight elements navigate and extend outward from the core. Meandering corridors connect the various outposts that sit connected but somewhat separate from one another, culminating in an idyllically positioned balcony to watch the world pass by.
The weighted masonry of the concrete acts as the absorber of heat and is a stabilising gesture within the home, while lighter weight elements navigate and extend outward from the core.
