Riverside house is an elegant and sculptural family haven located on a generous yet highly constrained site that is bounded by two major arterial routes and has, as its southern boundary, the Avon River.

The challenge, says Rob Bosma, Director of Three Sixty Architecture, was to fit a large family home into a tight building envelope.

“The site, at 1150m2, is fairly ample for a suburban lot, however it is constrained by a 15-metre setback from the river, which effectively cuts the site in half. When our clients bought the site it came with like-for-like resource consent and a footprint established by an original 1950s-era house that had occupied the site prior to the earthquakes. This afforded us some leeway with the design.”

Rob says that embracing the riverside setting while retaining privacy from the busy intersection was a primary concern of the clients and of the project brief.

“Our response was to design a simple, uncluttered composition of stacked forms interlinked and cut open to expose the interior spaces to the adjacent river and park views beyond. The ground floor contains the kitchen, dining and living areas, as well as a guest suite and garaging. The upper floor contains bedrooms and a media room.”

Large sliding glass doors on the southern facade provide access to a small riverside terrace, while similar doors on the northern facade open onto a large courtyard, which is shielded from the street by the house itself. These wall-to-wall apertures serve to dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior spaces and also create sightlines from the courtyard to the river and beyond to the park.

“The river’s southerly position to the site, coupled with the busy intersection, is at odds with the preferred siting of the outdoor living spaces. By creating this high level of transparency on the ground floor, we have been able to provide coveted north-facing outdoor living while still maintaining a high level of connection to the view.

“This sense of amenity has been further reinforced through the seamless use of floor tiling and wall finishes employed continuously between interior and exterior spaces. The materiality is sophisticated and elegant—burnished concrete render, stone flooring and dark timbers—delivering a rich and tactile experience,” says Rob.

“We came up with the initial concept for the interior, with the living areas designed to be restrained and minimal without feeling stark or sterile. We then collaborated with Lume Design who further developed the interior design scheme, which fully delivers on that initial brief, with spaces that are breathtakingly simple and highly textural.”

The design responds to privacy by incorporating a textured mix of screening devices—from dark vertical louvres along the southern and northern facades, to softer interior draping intended to shroud and conceal the interior environment without losing the occupant’s relationship to the river and park beyond. Filtered light and shadow, created by the first-floor louvres, results in a collection of calm and ordered spaces that respond to the tempo of the day and season and set the mood for multiple ways of living.

“This is a building that celebrates its location and complements the existing site context and surrounding landscape, yet still provides a comfortable retreat away from a very busy urban environment.”

Photography by Simon Devitt

Words by Justin Foote.