Disguised and Textural – Lake Rotoiti House by EMA

Sitting almost disguised in its lakeside setting, Lake Rotoiti House expresses its milieu and a sense of context through a sedate, textural materiality and warmth. EMA draws from the surrounds as musing for the resulting home – a place that allows a sense of escape while also idyllically encasing its guests.

Spread over several levels, Lake Rotoiti House nestles into the sloping lakeside embankment of its siting and aims to almost back itself into the slope as an anchor in place. As an occasional home for its owners, representing ideas of escape and retreat, it is a place imagined as a refuge amongst the natural. The surrounding bushland becomes a key inspiration and, in an aim to sit lightly on the earth, the resulting home uses a palette of dark textures in a recessive approach, ensuring the form feels like an extension of what lay before. As an expression of that connection between built and the natural, timber is used extensively both externally and internally to bring both warmth and a textural reminder of the surroundings into the experience of the home. EMA uses emotive and sensory touchpoints to further emphasise the feeling of escape.

As an expression of that connection between built and the natural, timber is used extensively both externally and internally to bring both warmth and a textural reminder of the surroundings into the experience of the home.

Built by Insight Carpentry together with landscape design by Flora and Form Landscapes, Lake Rotoiti House has been founded on principles of integration and immersion. The immediately surrounding landscape both adds a formality to the ecosystem while also buffering the harder edges of the architectural form against the softer and more naturally occurring flora. The home becomes an articulated expression of the New Zealand native bushland, forming a palette from the base tonality found amongst the natural environment. While the linear and modernist approach to the home is defiantly unnatural, its response to the surrounds is an offer of intended permanence.

Designed for both small and large gatherings, Lake Rotoiti House contracts and expands as needed. On the upper level a projected form juts out above the covered outdoor space below, both offering shelter and becoming its own architectural expression. The simplicity of form is inspired by both place and purpose, with the home combining elements of refinement and complexity in its layering while also sitting unobtrusively and respectfully amongst the surrounds. Internally a dark and encasing feeling is consistent throughout, as a further reinforcement of the sense of refuge.

The home becomes an articulated expression of the New Zealand native bushland, forming a palette from the base tonality found amongst the natural environment.

Lake Rotoiti House combines a robust resilience with a sensitively empathic approach. Through textural and tonal gestures from place, EMA integrates the home into its environment.