Interior of Ravenscar House, Christchurch. Patterson Associates won a NZ Institute of Architects housing award for this building on November 22, 2024. Photo / NZIA
Interior of Ravenscar House, Christchurch. Patterson Associates won a NZ Institute of Architects housing award for this building on November 22, 2024. Photo / NZIA
One house was built on the site of an abandoned former public swimming pool, one is an art museum and one was designed for the architect’s parents.
Architects who designed three residential buildings won national awards in the housing category of Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects inNovember.
It is hard to call these three new buildings “houses” when Ōtahtahi’s Ravenscar House Museum is included and it’s also hard to call them “new” when that art museum opened in 2021.
The residences are in Whanganui, Ōtautahi and Wānaka.
A jury citation noted difficulties with this category when it referred to the Wānaka house, for example.
“The private house has become a contentious category in architecture as we grapple with issues of sustainability, density and housing security,” the jury said.
Whanganui’s Gonville pool house by Patchwork Architecture, Wellington
The Gonville pool house is in Whanganui. Photo / NZIA
The citation said this Whanganui house was an experimental venture for a new family home.
“While modest in scale, this well-crafted home exudes a warmth of colour and internal materials and an elegance of geometric structural detailing.”
The house has an enclosed courtyard. The original pool gatehouse and entry conceal a “suburban oasis of green within. Working hard to the site’s edges, this family home retains remnants of its aquatic past, which bring a smile to one’s face”.
This award-winning Whanganui house was built on the site of changing sheds at a former public swimming pool. Photo / NZIA
The house was called a celebration of the client and architect’s vision and showed how recreational spaces abandoned by some could be skillfully adapted and re-imagined.
Ben Mitchell-Anyon of Patchwork said the new house had been built on the site of a full-sized outdoor public pool.
The former outdoor council-owned municipal Gonville Baths were built in 1912 but shut due to maintenance problems around 2006, he said.
Stylish Whanganui house won its architects one of three national housing awards from the NZ Institute of Architects. Photo / NZIA
His clients had bought that site which included the main multi-lane pool, changing sheds, children and toddler pools, a neighbouring community hall and former fire station.
They had developed their new home on that site.
“There were changing sheds which were long and skinny. We had to demolish those because they were concrete block but without concrete inside the blocks. We filled the big swimming pool up with soil and turned it into a sunken garden but kept the front pool kiosk building,” he said.
Ōtautahi’s Ravenscar House by Patterson Associates, Parnell
Ravenscar House Museum won one of three housing awards from the NZIA. Photo / Canterbury Museum
The NZIA said Pattersons had delivered an outstanding response to the generous vision of art collectors Jim and Dr Susan Wakefield.
This building is operated by Canterbury Museum, is at 52 Rolleston Ave in the central city area and opened in November 2021.
“Bringing together a complex brief of art presentation, museological requirements, base isolation and car parking, this building exhibits exceptional craftsmanship and materiality throughout meticulously planned forms and spaces,” judges said.
Interior of Ravenscar House, Christchurch. Photo / NZIA
Interwoven throughout the design is the story of the Wakefield’s earthquake-damaged former home and art collection.
Interior spaces revealed a sense of quiet and calm, leading the visitor through a series of curated “ghost rooms” and exhibits, the citation said.
Ravenscar House won Patterson Architects one of the three housing awards at the NZ Institute of Architects national awards. Photo / NZIA
Volumes and areas of the original home provide the primary cues for a series of enclosed gallery spaces around a central courtyard, with glimpses to the surrounding gardens and the wider city beyond.
Andrew Patterson of Patterson Associates said Ravenscar House was not a residential building. No one lived there.
His clients were the Wakefields and later a trust.
He had entered the building in the public architecture category, he said, yet the judges had decided to give it an award under the housing category.
Architect Andrew Patterson, whose firm was one of three winners in the 2024 NZIA housing category.
It won best new cultural building at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in 2023, reported as beating a $138 million concert venue in San Diego, a $450m convention centre and a new art museum in Milan.
Patterson said that in 2022, it was named the supreme winner in the New Zealand commercial project awards and got an honourable mention in The Architect’s Newspaper AN 2024 best design awards in the United States.
The building is named Ravenscar after an English village where Susan Wakefield’s family holidayed.
Wānaka’s S.K.I. house by Roberts Gray Architects of Ponsonby
The S.K.I. house in Wanaka was designed by Roberts Gray Architects. Photo / Sam Hartnett
The judges said the architects had approached this house with propositions that extended architectural thinking.
“There is ... a suggestion of fresh approaches to materiality, massing, privacy and transparency and balance of built form to landscape.”
This meticulously detailed and experientially beautiful house revealed impressive technical ability and a finely wrought aesthetic judgement.
Importantly, it also demonstrated architectural thinking by a young practice that could lead to a better urbanism.
The S.K.I. house. Photo / Sam Hartnett
“A stark blank façade gives no hint of the riches within: a restrained material palette of half-height concrete blocks, Japanese cedar and oak floors with raw galvanised steel.”
Cedar cladding on the exterior had yaki-sugi treatment.
The same cedar had been left raw inside.
“Complete with a Japanese-style courtyard garden, the talented design team has created a stunner with their first project, thanks to a fantastically friendly client – their parents."
The S.K.I. house has views over Wānaka. Photo / Sam Hartnett
“While this house may be spending the kids’ inheritance, the integrity of design decisions and assured quality of the finished product suggests money well spent,” the judges said.
The house is a masterpiece, the judges said, calling the architects vanguards of the future.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
