Craft + care
WORDS Kim Newth
Two award-winning Canterbury homes by Three Sixty Architecture artfully balance a reverence for nature and the environment with functionality goals and modern liveability.
‘Wildwood’ in St Martins and ‘Whitecaps House’ in the small fishing community of Motunau, north of Christchurch, both won housing awards at the 2022 Canterbury Architecture Awards as well as Silver Pins at the Best Design Awards. ‘Wildwood’ also won the 2022 Resene Colour Award for clever and playful use of colour.
‘Wildwood’ is the home of Tom and Hollie Norman and their three children. Tom, an Associate at Three Sixty Architecture, says the design grew out of their desire to live sustainably in a warm, welcoming family home. The journey started with selecting a site close to the hills with good access to sun for solar energy and within biking distance of city amenities and local schools. The simple yet seismically robust two-storey rectangular home is anchored to the earth with hollow timber piles and strengthened with high-performance SIPs panels. There’s not a scrap of concrete anywhere and very little steel.
Internally, this cosy home really does feel settled, as though it has been standing in place for a long time. Warm and airtight, it keeps a nice even temperature year-round. A central double void is a showstopper that brings life and light into the home’s main hub, including open-plan kitchen, living, and dining areas. A plush curtain off the living area opens into a delightful, book-lined snug. It is easy to see why Wildwood won a colour award: downstairs, there is a pleasing interplay of white tiles and timber, while upstairs, a pink-tiled bathroom and a blue-tiled bathroom pay homage to gorgeous sunrises that tint the heavens here. The upper bedroom level is carpet tiled in pink and blue too.
This award-winning four-bedroom home, complete with solar panels and rainwater harvesting tanks, certainly packs a lot of impressive detail into its comparatively modest 170sqm footprint. Everything down to naturally coated Douglas fir cladding and double-glazed aluminium joinery feeds into this special family home’s sustainability story.
In creating the award-winning design for ‘Whitecaps House’ Three Sixty Architecture Associate Nick Wortelboer took his lead from a dramatic cliff-top site and the client’s brief for an easy-care holiday home, where family could gather and enjoy magnificent ocean views over Motunau Island and beyond.
At the heart of this gorgeous four-bedroom retreat is a sheltered, north-facing central courtyard seamlessly connected with the interior. With the central living and dining space glazed on both sides, it is easy to see what’s happening within the house while soaking up ocean views from the courtyard. Social activities inside naturally spill out, with easy flow in both directions.
In this coastal home, prevailing sea breezes are harnessed for cross-ventilation while generous soffits and steel features provide shelter from intense sun in summer (as well as bringing sun inside over winter).
With raised gardens producing a bounty of homegrown fruit and veggies, it would be hard to better the health and well-being qualities inherent in this award-winning easy-care home, made for outdoor coastal living.