Blurred Boundaries – Wairau Valley House by Parsonson Architects

Connecting to the richly woven landscape of farms, orchards and vineyards it sits amongst, Wairau Valley House by Parsonson Architects is a play on concealment and reveal.

Located in the valley of the same name, Wairau Valley House is sited ten minutes from Blenheim, which forms the gateway to the Marlborough wine region. The home’s position in amongst the pastoral farmland affords enviable surrounding views. The formal response to site, opening and closing at strategically considered areas, shows a measured play on opening and closing in engagement with the elements. Sitting low and long along the site, Parsonson Architects has utilised a sprawling type affect, hugging the landscape and optimising its location and incredible surrounding aspect.

Wairau Valley House is sited ten minutes from Blenheim, which forms the gateway to the Marlborough wine region.

The home is comprised of a series of interlinked pavilions that seem to camp on the ground, stretching across the site, and delineating zones of functionality and varying levels of privacy and retreat. The resulting connecting links between the pavilions allows for a sense of relief between solid planes and creates interesting thresholds for transition and movement across the site. Each zone is housed under low sloping gable rooved formations, pitching internal spaces to encase the whole volume of the form.

Each zone is housed under low sloping gable rooved formations, pitching internal spaces to encase the whole volume of the form.

With heavy weighted concrete walls as defining elements, lighter frames and glass stretch between these bollards in the landscape. Their presence helps define zones and emerge from the landscape as natural, textured stone elements from which the resulting architecture arches out. The gables above then float over, providing shelter within by referencing the traditional ‘home’ vernacular. Internally, these masonry walls are left untreated, expressing their rough and natural nature, and providing an element of contrast against the polished timber and refined detail and junctions.

Opening and closing to its cultivated landscape surrounding, the lines of the orchard trees and vines inspire the regularity of the lines within Wairau Valley House. Parsonson Architects creates a series of framed views to the site beyond through the large-spanning glass elements, stretching between solid masonry weighted forms. The grounded and low nature of the overall form feels connected and secured to the site, while large openings and glazed elements allow visual connection through the solid forms and out beyond to its unique location.

Wairau Valley House takes heed from its site, engraining patterning, texture and a formality that responds to its context, creating a sheltered and sculptural home.