Lance Herbst, principal of Auckland-based studio Herbst Architects has designed a beautiful project: The Under Pohutukawa Beach House
The site was extremely challenging in. 90% covered in mature pohutukawa trees , the site being a part of a continuous belt of forest that edges the road along the beach front. The circumstances not so much allowed, but dictated a sensitive poetic response to a building that, in order to exist would require the destruction of a large number of mature trees.
The house is separated into private and “public” components. The private functions of bedrooms and garage are housed in two towers which are construed as freshly swan stumps of the trees that were removed. To allude to the bark of the stumps the skins of the towers are clad in black/brown stained rough swan irregular battens. The interior spaces are then seen as carved out of the freshly cut wood, achieved by detailing all the wall / ceiling and cabinetry elements in the same light timber.
The public space connects the two towers and attempts to engage with the surrounding pohutukawa forest by defining a crossover space between the powerful natural environment and the built form. The plane of the roof form pins off the towers to engage with the continuous tree canopy, disintegrating from a rigid plane to a frayed edge which filters light in a similar way to the leaf canopy. The primary structure holding up the roof is a series of tree elements which allude to the trunks and branches of trees but are detailed in a rigorous geometric arrangement which suggests an ordering of nature as it enters and forms the building.
