This house and guest house is located in an ecological and environmentally sustainable subdivision on an unpopulated edge of Lake Wanaka. The land is zoned 'outstanding landscape' requiring the most onerous application of the Resource Management Act. The house is carefully nestled into a site on the edge of a hillside and within highly protected native vegetation.

The client required the highest standards of mitigating operational energy use within the house.

The house is benched into the schist rock geology of the sloping site. We have sought to create a tilted stone base that 'drives' ouf of the ground in a way reminiscent of the local Central Otago landscape. This establishes 'new landscape' upon which we have placed a glass and timber pavillion, which houses the majority of living and sleeping functions.