Compact & Clever

Drawn together with a restrained, minimal material palette, this Jack’s Point house reflects and celebrates the surrounding alpine landscape.

Designed by Anna-Marie Chin Architects, the home features an asymmetrical gable form that echoes the peaks of the nearby Remarkables mountain range, tipping interior spaces towards light and views while following the natural contours of the land.

A cohesive COLORSTEEL® Alpine Tray shell in Ebony Low Gloss wraps across both roof and walls, reminiscent of shed forms seen across rural Otago. The linear nature of this long-run steel profile accentuates the contemporary angular roof form, while providing a robust home that can stand up to high winds and exposure in an alpine environment, protecting the family that resides within it. Warm plywood lined recesses on sheltered deck areas create a sense of flow between interior and exterior spaces, contrasting against the dark cladding.

Given its narrow site on the outskirts of the Jack’s Point subdivision, the home is cleverly designed to pack a lot of punch into its compact 158m². Creative design solutions activate pockets of available space, providing storage areas wherever possible, while an office and kid’s hangout is tucked into a mezzanine overlooking the lounge below. Whimsically,this is accessed by a ladder from the kitchen, with a steel bridge reaching across a cavity on the upper floor.

Glimpses of the mountains are framed by smaller windows in the private areas of the home, while a double height glazed wall lends plenty of light to the living space. With such an incredible backdrop,the landscape provides the majority of the texture and colour, with an interior palette of plywood delineated with black edging, kitchen cabinetry, furnishings, feature walls and rugs. Stainless steel benchtops and appliances and a pop of red in the form of the front door provide a modern departure from this minimal palette.

From within, the home is pleasantly enveloped in the warmth of the honey-coloured timber, with the home’s fun features providing spark for the young family it was built for. The exterior then cuts a significantly sharper shape, in keeping with its natural and built surroundings.

While completed in 2016, the home remains timelessly contemporary due to these striking angles and its flexible interior design. A multiple award winner, the Queenstown house took out Best Small Home in Home Magazine’s Home of the Year, an NZIA Southern Award for Architecture, and aNZIA New Zealand Architecture Award for Housing in 2016, and is still a coveted home today.