This Parnell sanctuary offers contemporary inner-city living in one of Auckland’s most coveted suburbs. It’s one of two new houses on a shared site occupied by two young families.

This luxury rural retreat was built in three stages over a period of 14 years to accommodate the evolving needs of the owners incorporating a main two-level family home along with a detached guest house, games room, swimming pool, tennis court and tennis pavilion, and a separate garaging pavilion and boat shed, all organized around a curved entry colonnade with the structures broken up to create a unique sense of private pavilions in the landscape. Extensive landscaping is also developed on site including entry colonnade.

This poised, four-bedroom family home is built on a steep west-facing site on the slopes of Mt Eden. The design attempts to express the idea of a platform, built out from the slope of a mountain.

It is a contemporary inner-suburban house in a historic streetscape of considerable interest: the street frontage has a vertical emphasis and respects the set-back and textured pattern of the houses that enclose it.

Simple materials such as corrugated steel cladding, structural steel and cedar cladding have contributed to the evolution of an inspired beach house located on a site with spectacular views to offshore islands on the Coromandel Peninsula.

In keeping with the clients’ expectations of a simple holiday lifestyle, a terracotta floor that extends to an outside terrace reinforces a casual dialogue between internal and external spaces.