An overseas client wished for a resort style retreat to share the beauty of Queenstown with his family and friends. The challenge, architecturally, was to provide the number of rooms required without overpowering the sensitivity of the site that is perched above the 12 Mile Delta. The brief required six bedrooms along with numerous living spaces, a gym and an office.

The form of the house remains sympathetic to the central Otago vernacular, with subtle steeps in the gable roof forms to alleviate the scale of the house. The courtyard layout of the house is dampened by luscious new landscaping courtyards where the architecture provides a framework to the scenery beyond. The great room at the centre of the house opens both north and south. North to a protected courtyard and south to Lake Wakatipu and The Remarkables. The exterior palette of timber boards with vertical battens and bagged schist stone blends into the site, capped by the contrasting dark metal roof.

A richness of materials is carried throughout the interior of the house from the mild steel panelling as you enter to the vertical oak boarding of the Great Room and Library. The consistency of proportion and scale throughout the house has resulted in a retreat that is both intimate and soft while remaining sophisticated and distinguished.

Design: Lawrence Sumich / Sam Baxter

Interiors: Virginia Fisher / Lawrence Sumich / Sam Baxter

Landscape: Suzanne Turley Landscapes

Engineer: Hadley Consultants

Photography: Simon Devitt Photography