By Solarei Architecture
Huia Environmental House, Manukau Harbour, Waitakere, New Zealand
2021 Winner of General Category, ‘13th Green Home of the Year Awards, USA Green Builder Magazine’ - International Green Building Competition
266m² four bedroom house broken into separate Carport, Main dwelling and Guest dwelling, elevated above the Manukau Harbour, with Waitakere ranges to the East, North and West, and prime Manukau Harbour views to the South. The client brief was, deliver a creative architectural design, that worked with its natural environmental, summer climate, winter climate, would be energy efficient to run and, warm and heathy to live in.
The collaborative design solution we arrived at for the house, would bend a bit like a ‘Boomerang’ over part of a 4 Ha site. The floor plan layout would bend and follow the North seasonal sun path for optimized passive solar gain and sunlight, buffering from cold Southwest winds, landscape integration, and South views of the Manukau Harbour.
Credit: Builders, https://www.crafthomes.co.nz/
Solarei Architecture was born out of a passion to deliver well designed, creatively focused, collaboratively based, budget conscious, environmentally responsive house designs to our clients.
What we design combines client aspirations with a creative environmental response, using clever design strategies to achieve this. Our objective is to creatively design homes which are based on environmental sustainable design principles, and the human experience.
Environmental sustainable design principles take into consideration a meaningful engagement with environment and climate. Design principles we use are based on smart orientation, passive solar, passive design strategies, natural warmth, passive cooling, cross ventilation, and stack effect. High performance building materials, energy efficiency, smart green technologies, and healthy building materials are some of the ingredients we use to achieve this.
By using this design approach, we are able to design a house which is naturally warm in winter, naturally cool in summer, gets the most of unique site features, and is always enjoyable to live in.
Fostering engaging relationships with clients, based on listening, honesty, and mutual exchanging of ideas has resulted in many successful award-winning projects, with national (NZ) and international recognition of our work.
Currently we are working on projects in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Please get in touch if our work interests you.