The Lake Hawea Courtyard House is grounded in rural land at the foot of Mount Maude in the Otago region.

The dominant landscape and big views invited a design enquiry into the nature of the site. What kind of architecture is best and most appropriate to occupy such a landscape? How could you define and inhabit the edges of the house?

The design response was a low-slung residential home with a simple square plan. It imagines the modest language of the region’s early vernacular buildings – but elevated by rigourous architectural detailing.

It is a refuge in what can be an extreme climate; the fully enclosed stone construction is anchored to the land, its singular form given texture by the irregular shaped bricks that form its armour. At the heart of the home is a courtyard sanctuary –  a middle ground between the domestic scale of the interiors and the vastness of the landscape, framing views to the lofty mountain across low, wide plains.

‍