This house falls into that new sort of globalised architecture: American owners; Australian architect; New Zealand site. This cultural cross-over could bring to mind all sorts of inappropriate Ranchero adobes or Cape Cod mansions plonked incongruously in the Bay of Islands, yet this house does nothing of the sort. Neither has the architecture taken a listless when-in-Rome… attitude and tried to emulate some indefinable New Zealand architectural aesthetic. The house succeeds because the simple building responds so deftly to the surrounding landscape, but also subtly links with its Australian and American heritage as well, creating a house that’s international without being forcibly so.

The owners, Fred and Kitty Mann, contacted architect James Grose of BVN Architecture after seeing his work in American shelter magazine Dwell. They were going to be in Auckland the next day and wanted to discuss the possibilities of building a house in New Zealand. Rather serendipitously, Grose, who at the time was working on the commercial Sovereign House project (which subsequently won a Supreme Award in the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA) Awards in 2008), was also going to be in Auckland. They met up that afternoon, and the global trifecta came into place. Fred then met Philip Lindesay of Lindesay Construction who built the house.

The fact that the client’s contacted Grose from seeing his contemporary aesthetic would lend an expectation that they weren’t interested in inserting some American architectype onto foreign soil. As Grose comments, “It’s not at all an American house, [the clients] wanted an experience appropriate to the place. This experience [of the landscape] was what they came here for; not to impose their own cultural landscape here.”

The beauty and drama of the Bay of Islands landscape would be obvious to anyone, but what Grose noticed with his Australian eyes was its clarity. “The principle differences in the landscape [between Australia and New Zealand] is the strong clarity in the colours and the sky [in New Zealand]. Australia has a more muted colour, there is a blueness to everything from the eucalyptus oil in the air, a haziness. But the light and air in New Zealand is light and crisp; there is a clarity about it,” Grose explains. That appreciation of sharpness was translated into a building that aimed to draw the landscape through the house. “There was a clarity in [the house’s] expression. Edges are very sharp and minimal with a high degree of clarity. It is a very compatible language with the implied structural language of the landscape.”

Grose imagined the house as a simple platform – a veranda – a horizontal line that mimicked the horizon that clearly delineates sea from sky. “It is a primitive idea of what you need to keep yourself safe from the creepy crawlies. It is an almost visceral idea of what it is to occupy built space,” he says. The structure, particularly vertical structures like columns and mullions, were minimised, giving a seamless quality to the way the house, especially the living area and the decks, links with the landscape beyond.

The minimal, skeletal structure of the house invited a suggestion of a “Miesian-Murcutt tradition” in the citation of the house’s recent win of a Local NZIA Award. The conjoint itself hints again at this subtle layering of influences from Australia and America on this Antipodean landscape. Grose acknowledges the influence, but suggests it is more subconscious than deliberate, saying: “I come from the school of that kind of late 20th-century skeletal architectural education.”

Inside, the analogy of the veranda means that the plan is very simple in its workings – there is an entry ramp from the car port where one enters directly into the open living and dining area. A corridor runs along one side with the kitchen, study, three bedrooms and two bathrooms all linked off this. Doors are mostly sliding panels, which again implies a simple and minimal idea of habitation. Steel and glass are the main materials used on this house, with a timber floor to give depth and character to that key horizontal element. “There is a very strong contrast between the primary expression of the grey steel frame and the horizontal frame of the timber and the white walls. The house has been designed to be invisible, well, minimal in its impact. There is a lack of complexity,” Grose says.

With such a limited range of materials, how those materials are used is brought to the forefront. Grose says, “When you make architecture in steel, apart from proportion and the elegance of how the steel members relate to each other, the other key thing is connection. If you don’t get that right, you haven’t got anything right. In this house there is an emphasis on the steel being very flush in its detailing; almost as if made out of continuous material. Again with the idea of the landscape, the structure is unobtrusive. The detailing has not been done to announce or give attention to anything but the landscape.”

This house has a clear sense of itself, despite its multiple parentage, and every element has been crisply articulated. But most importantly, it is all about living. The platform is a carefully built perch that, in the end, Grose says, is “just sort of comfortable.”