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A Queenstown home perched high above Frankton Arm has earned its designer two accolades at the ADNZ Resene Architectural Design Awards for Otago and Southland.
Queenstown architectural designer Carolin Friese’s project, The Eyrie, was commended in the ‘New Home between 150sqm and 300sqm’ category and highly commended in the ‘Home Interiors’ category at a ceremony in Dunedin last Friday.
The 214sqm, single-level home is built on posts on a steep Queenstown Hill site overlooking Lake Wakatipu.
It was completed last August as a spec home by builder-developers Harry Nichol and Sam Baylis.
Friese says the project demonstrates that “thoughtful, people-centred design can coexist with commercial viability”.
“What’s quite special about this project is that it was a development rather than a private commission.”
However, the developers wanted to set a new benchmark for quality.
“Together we proved that putting people-comfort and longevity at the centre can still make commercial sense.”
She is also pleased The Eyrie was recognised for both its exterior and interior, because the two aspects of her design were never considered separately.
She regards it as a “quiet” house that does not attempt to dominate its surroundings.
“It sits quite lightly on the hillside and simply belongs.”
The judges said it combined “spatial clarity, environmental performance and careful craftsmanship to create a home that sits comfortably within its alpine setting”.
Of the 17 projects in Otago and Southland to win awards, The Eyrie was one of only four in Queenstown.
The others were ‘Terrington Court’, a Jack’s Point house by Dunedin-based architectural designer Ant Jackson, ‘Heights Crib’ by Tai Tua’i, also of Dunedin, and ‘The Rifters’ by Dunedin’s Reece Warnock, of Warnock Architecture Ltd.
That is a relocatable hospo structure for Arrowtown’s Rifters Gin, inspired by village’s gold mining heritage — it won the regional award for ‘Architectural Spaces and Structures’ and the regional ADNZ ‘Resene Kaitiakitanga Award’.
The national ADNZ awards will be held in Auckland on October 30.
