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Architects: Irving Smith Architects
- Area: 132 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Patrick Reynolds
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Manufacturers: APL NZ, Color steel, DRYDEN, Resene, Triclad
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Lead Architects: Jeremy Smith, Andrew Irving
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Builders: Simon Murray Builders, Jane & Simon Murray
Text description provided by the architects. We all love adventures with friends, imagine the fun with a family of builders and makers. Everyone builds when not everyone has a room, and you move in with only a roof. This is that kind of home; welcoming, informal, but prompting and outward-looking; crafted from the inside out.
The Feather House rests high on a hill overlooking Nelson, somewhere between town and country, land and air. Its life in a corridor, communal and meandering; a pathway for many or one, widening for an external welcome and braiding to a soap-box balcony. There are many ways in for this is a place to come home. A home with an external entry and warm concrete wall to put your back on, find the center and orientate outwards again.
The house elongates and feathers to achieve this, tapering ends to open external space and make connections. It feathers materials as layers, so things come in stages; off-form concrete, joinery, furniture, plants, even crafting a lapped-cladding with copper tips and lifting itself on a ladder to allow material racking underneath.
This is a house not just about the ‘here-and-now’ but the ‘there-and-then’. A 2 bedroom house for a family of five, where spaces connect rather than divide and rooms don’t get left behind as time passes. For buildings, like life, are never finished when they offer an invitation. Adventures are fun, thanks for having us along.
