Monk Mackenzie Architects on Lunchbox Architect

Monk Mackenzie is a highly creative, multi-disciplinary studio of architects and designers based in Auckland, New Zealand, established to provide clients with "elegant, sculptural and poetic solutions to complex briefs". Partners Hamish Monk and Dean Mackenzie met while working with Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) in New York and London and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Hong Kong, and the studio aims to make a lasting contribution to the built environment in a sustainable and environmentally intelligent way.

On Lunchbox, Waiatarua House is a new home on a steep, challenging site in the Orakei creek gully. The challenge was to insert a bold home into a sensitive bush reserve while keeping a sense of modesty, even poetry. Seeking a quiet architectural expression, "a silent witness to its surroundings", the design uses three simple elemental forms that step down the site towards the creek.

See Waiatarua House on Lunchbox below.

Waiatarua House: A New House on a Steep, Challenging Site

One of the challenges at Waiatarua House was to giving the home a sense of modesty and poetry in the sensitive bush reserve.

Waiatarua House: A New House on a Steep, Challenging Site

One of the challenges at Waiatarua House was to giving the home a sense of modesty and poetry in the sensitive bush reserve.