A Modest Insertion – Tom’s House by Anna-Marie Chin Architects

Quietly perched amongst an incredible and enviable landscape setting, Tom’s House is a modest and reductive insertion into the natural environment. Anna-Marie Chin Architects draws on geometric cues of the nearby mountain range while forming the slight and robust resolve of the resulting home, part one of a two-part plan.

 There is something very familiar and almost expected about found shelter amongst mountainous regions, where the smaller and less ornate the more appropriate in response to the setting. Simplicity acts as a counter to the rugged terrain and the need for shelter, and the complexity usually associated with traditionally building in elevated settings. While Tom’s House sits on an easily accessible clearing, its setting amongst the impressive mountainous backdrop Queenstown is known for calls for a similar methodology. Wrapped in darkened steel sheeting, the small home feels compact and notably protected from the elements, almost bunker-esque in form, as small openings connect to the landscape. Anna-Marie Chin Architects anchors the small form to the site and focuses on connections outward.

Internally, timber ply sheets stained a honey colour wrap the interior walls and ceiling to create and emphasise a sense of enclosure, while polished concrete underfoot is intended to absorb warmth and be a resilient base.

Built by Multiline Construction and with landscape design by LAND, Tom’s House is the first chapter of a two-part plan. In conceiving the two-bedroom home, the initial structure forms the residence component, while the second is envisioned as a similar form for renting and the generation of passive income. In its compactness, the home sits comfortably in the natural setting, with integrated and concealed joinery allowing for an increased sense of generosity internally and freedom of movement. Throughout, smaller secondary areas and niches are intended as convertible spaces, for sitting or sleeping as needed.

While the exterior form peels upward to create an asymmetrical ridge toward the ranges, its angled lines of steel sheeting connect to the ridge lines of the mountain sides, all flowing along the same direction. With the same materiality wrapping from the roof and down each of the external walls, the overall form becomes emphasised even further, reminiscent of a fallen rock that has been found in place. Internally, timber ply sheets stained a honey colour wrap the interior walls and ceiling to create and emphasise a sense of enclosure, while polished concrete underfoot is intended to absorb warmth and act as a resilient and low maintenance base.

With the same materiality wrapping from the roof and down each of the external walls, the overall form becomes emphasised even further, reminiscent of a fallen rock that has been found in place.

Tom’s House draws on the simplicity and necessity of a mountain lodge structure. Anna-Marie Chin Architects elevates the expected and frame unique views outward, while creating a warming encasing of the home’s residents.