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HILLTOP
HOUSE

Project Notes

HILLTOP
HOUSE

Project Notes
The lodge is located on a hilltop within a former cattle farm that has been extensively restored and replanted to form the Walter C. Mountain Landing development.

The hilltop lodge overlooks Wairoa and Te Puna Bays on the Purerua Peninsula in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.

The project suggests an incremental occupation of the site with materials and forms reflecting three discrete elements: stone observatory and underground store and a long barn-like form bisected by symmetrical flat roofed living and sleeping pavilions to create a cruciform plan.

The observation tower is formed from extruded nested asymmetrical ellipses, each with entasis; a stair ascends between the nested forms and links wine cellar, guest suite and roof top observatory. The tower is a pivot around which the buildings making up the lodge are arrayed.

The project uses a number of materials found elsewhere at Mountain landing: insitu concrete, weathered timber, raw steel and volcanic stones harvested from adjacent farmland.

Photographer  Aaron Leitz



















HILLTOP HOUSE
Project Notes

HillTop house
Project Notes