The site is an open, thin forest on a hill overlooking a bay north of Auckland.
Light is continuously filtered through the trees producing a soft diffuse focus. There is a unique atmosphere connected to the dappled light of an open canopy thin forest. It’s different to deep, dark, dense forest aligned with dangerous fairy tales, unknown beasts and the big bad wolf.
A canopy of trees provide shade and shadow becomes lively and kinetic twinkling in the breeze.
The client has lived in Japan for 25 years and he has assimilated the subtleties of the Japanese culture. The culture makes a real effort to elevate shadow and the subtleties of light.
“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”
The construction system repeats the environmental condition allowing filtered light to permeate through sliding cedar screens backed continuously with glass as a weathering line. A pavilion roof drifts above effortlessly floating over the screens increasing the sense of lightness.
