Awards Keep Piling Up for Queenstown House

The master bedroom is extensively glazed with Metro Series windows that look out to Lake Wakatipu and Cecil Peak.

If awards are anything to go by a distinctive home on the shores of Lake Wakatipu is on track to become one of the most acclaimed New Zealand homes of the last decade.

Glen Cayless: A registered Master Builder who has been in the construction industry for 25 years, Glen and his crew spent 27 months on site compared with the usual 15 months for the medium to high-end homes that the firm specialises in.

So far the Preston Stevens-designed house has picked up seven design, materials or workmanship awards, the latest being the Window Association of New Zealand (WANZ) ‘Design Flair’ award in the $50,000+ category (window value).

“We’ll be struggling to get another job like that again,” said Queenstown builder, Glen Cayless, of G.S.Cayless Construction Ltd, who spent 27 months on site supervising the most sustained application of craftsmanship that his company has ever been involved in. “It was the most demanding residential project we’ve done,” he said, “but it was good for us: working with Preston and observing his eye for detail. It taught me a lot.”

The house earned Cayless Construction the Master Builder’s regional supreme award and put it close to the winning post for the national supreme award.

Preston Stevens: Preston, of 2 Architecture Studio, has been practising as an architect in Queenstown for 16 years.

Queenstown Architect Preston Stevens, of 2 Architecture Studio, received an NZIA Southern Region Architecture Award.

The award citation referred to the “complex and difficult client brief [which] stipulated a Japanese style interior within the covenanted restrictions on the exterior design. The main bedroom wing is an unexpected surprise of beautifully created spaces… Flexibility of space and beautifully crafted rooms with attention to fine detail are the hallmarks of an outstanding piece of design.”

The home owners had spent many years living in Japan – indeed through most of the construction phase as well – and sought a distinctly Japanese feel to the interior.

Stevens’ design divided the house in two by clearly separating a private master bedroom area (turn right at the top of the entrance stairs …) deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic, from the living areas (turn left…) which are more contemporary but with a continuity of some of the oriental decorative elements.

The home’s Japanese wing is on the right while the more contemporary living area is on the left.

The home is built below the Remarkables, a fact which, not surprisingly, influenced Stevens’ architecture.

A basement pedestal clad in schist up to the datum floor level was decided upon, with the materials getting lighter and softer as the building rises. Columns in plastered concrete frame extensive glazing to capitalise on the awesome lake and mountain views. Stained Cedar boards then come into play under a roof pitch that follows the slope of the original building site.

Japanese Wing

Stevens was shown books of Japanese architecture and décor that the owners liked. This gave him design cues. “It wasn’t like looking at a building, though,” says Stevens.” They showed a room and indicated a type of aesthetic and feel.” These served as solid reference points for the exquisite ‘Tatami’ room, a traditional multi-purpose living/dining/sleeping room that is included in the master bedroom area, as well as for a traditional ‘Ofuro’ bathroom with permanently filled hot tub.

Extensive glazing in the living areas included bi-folding door formats, awning windows and fixed lights (all double glazed).

Southland Silver Beech was used extensively throughout the house on wall panels, kitchen cupboard joinery, wardrobes, doors, sliding screens, and also on a pelmet-level frieze which extends throughout the house as a unifying aesthetic feature.

The frieze incorporates more than 3,500 vertical battens and is reminiscent of traditional Japanese screens. Wooden floors are in Saligna.

Living Area

Altherm window manufacturer designwindows Central Otago, based in Cromwell, supplied the exterior joinery using the high performance Metro Series. Products supplied included bi-fold doors, awning windows, sliding windows and Plasma entrance doors. The surface finish is silver anodise.