Vernon Drive

Lincoln, Selwyn

A 196m² home in the Te Whāriki subdivision, on the edge of a restored waterway, where a cedar-clad entry tower and opposing mono-pitch roof planes give a flat section some height and some shelter.

Location: Vernon Drive, Lincoln
Type: Custom new build
Floor area: 196m²
Bedrooms: 4
Bathrooms: 2
Living areas: 2
Garaging: Double
Guarantee: Master Build 10-Year

The brief

A family home on a flat Lincoln section that backs onto the subdivision's restored waterway, planned to take the outlook without giving up privacy from the walkway alongside it.

The site

Te Whāriki is one of the few Canterbury subdivisions where the landscape came first. The section sits above a restored waterway planted in tussock, flax and sedge, and the water is a genuine amenity rather than a stormwater drain with a fence around it.

That sets the problem: everything good about the site is at the back, and the street elevation still has to announce the front door. A flat section gives you no natural height to solve it with, so the height has to be built.

What we did

A cedar-clad tower marks the entry and carries the roof up over it, so the front door reads from the street without a portico or any applied decoration. Cedar is the only warm material on an otherwise white elevation, and it is held back to the entry so that it stays a signal rather than a texture.

The roof is a pair of mono-pitch planes rather than a hip. One rises from the garage over the entry and the other falls away toward the living end, which gives the street elevation a profile and the living areas their ceiling height in one move.

At the back the house drops to a single low plane over a timber deck, so the side that faces the waterway is all glazing and eaves rather than gable.