Houzz Tour: A Home Made to Look ‘Smashed, Bashed and Broken’
In a beautiful, secluded New Zealand valley, a vacation house buit from reclaimed materials pays homage to traditional agrarian structures
The owners of this new house come and go from their 50-acre property beside the Kauaeranga River on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula. Working in the film industry as a director and a director of photography, they retreat to these rugged hills between shoots, tending the land, raising animals and growing their own food. There is a river to swim in and steep hills to climb. They have planted thousands of native species. And when they’re not doing that, they sit and take in the extraordinary view.
The owners approached Lance and Nicola Herbst a few years ago. They had always admired the designers’ work — building thoughtful wood houses that pay close attention to materials, though they wanted something a little more rough-hewn. They gave the Herbsts a clear idea of what they wanted. “One big thing was imperfect materials,” Lance says. “They literally said ‘smashed and bashed and broken.’” They wanted a farm building, a retreat from the landscape but a place from which to view it too.
Initially, the owners suggested making new materials feel distressed and weathered, since they work in the art department of film sets and do this frequently in their profession. Such an approach didn’t quite jell with the Herbsts, who have a track record of building honest buildings with integrity in their materials and construction. “We said, ‘We’re making a building; we don’t need to do that. We can go and get the real weathered, aged materials. We don’t have to fake it.’ And that’s where we started,” Lance says.
The main idea of the house is that it is a big roof floating in the landscape. On an earlier project, the Herbsts had learned that building on a rural farm property has a different set of rules from those of the coast or city. Under New Zealand planning laws, moving earth is generally a no-no, but farmers are free to move as much earth as they like without gaining consent.
This freed up the architects to dig out the end of a ridge and build a long retaining wall to create a building platform. The house would sit below the hillside, with a 270-degree view out over the valley. Taking this approach, they could build the house into the landscape and create two very different spaces: an open-plan living area downstairs and enclosed bedrooms upstairs.
This freed up the architects to dig out the end of a ridge and build a long retaining wall to create a building platform. The house would sit below the hillside, with a 270-degree view out over the valley. Taking this approach, they could build the house into the landscape and create two very different spaces: an open-plan living area downstairs and enclosed bedrooms upstairs.
Downstairs, the view is ever-present, wrapping around the house in a visceral way. Materials are simple, honest and roughly hewn: There is oiled timber, with the nail holes from its previous existence unfilled, and polished concrete. The simplicity focuses the mind on the view and the most basic elements of living: gathering firewood and making fire, catching food and cooking it. It is in this way that the house’s DNA becomes apparent.
The Herbsts — who immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa 20 years ago — have often spoken of how much they have been influenced by the most basic of structures in their adopted country: sheds, barns and modest beach houses. Yet in their hands, these simple structures become beautifully resolved.
The Herbsts — who immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa 20 years ago — have often spoken of how much they have been influenced by the most basic of structures in their adopted country: sheds, barns and modest beach houses. Yet in their hands, these simple structures become beautifully resolved.
There is real drama to the house. To get there, you turn off the main highway and drive up a gravel road that winds up a valley through thick bush, flitting in and out of view. You ford the river — there is no bridge — and then come up the hill on the farm access road to approach the house. Once you get there, there’s a simple gravel parking area at the top of the driveway and no real front door, in the way that traditional farmhouses often don’t have a proper front door, or at least not one that anyone actually uses.
It’s an almost gothic landscape, which encouraged the Herbsts to design an equally strong insertion into it — a departure from many of the houses they designed before, which were often lightweight wood homes made up of decks and screens that sit lightly in the landscape. This house is a strong, geometric intrusion into the landscape, with a top floor enclosed in rusty corrugated-iron panels. It is at once open and closed, lightweight and strong.
It’s an almost gothic landscape, which encouraged the Herbsts to design an equally strong insertion into it — a departure from many of the houses they designed before, which were often lightweight wood homes made up of decks and screens that sit lightly in the landscape. This house is a strong, geometric intrusion into the landscape, with a top floor enclosed in rusty corrugated-iron panels. It is at once open and closed, lightweight and strong.
On an early site visit, the owners took the architects down the valley to a barn built from rusted steel panels that had been recycled from an ancient locomotive — beaten-up and bashed, yet beautiful. “We photographed it, and it just sat there in our minds,” Lance says.
But first, the Herbsts spent months developing a more complicated design for the site, which the owners’ friend and neighbor, sculptor Louise Purvis, nicknamed the “puriri moth” (New Zealand’s largest moth). It was a rectangular roof draped asymmetrically over the ridgeline — beautiful but too complicated to build and design, with bigger spaces than were needed. So they started from scratch, despite the owners having fallen in love with the concept. “We really felt responsible about the budget,” Nicola says, “so we were really pleased to pull the pin and start afresh.” (Adds Lance: “We never do this!")
But first, the Herbsts spent months developing a more complicated design for the site, which the owners’ friend and neighbor, sculptor Louise Purvis, nicknamed the “puriri moth” (New Zealand’s largest moth). It was a rectangular roof draped asymmetrically over the ridgeline — beautiful but too complicated to build and design, with bigger spaces than were needed. So they started from scratch, despite the owners having fallen in love with the concept. “We really felt responsible about the budget,” Nicola says, “so we were really pleased to pull the pin and start afresh.” (Adds Lance: “We never do this!")
In starting from scratch, the Herbsts went back to the idea of the barn, remembering the rusty steel building in the valley they’d seen so early in the process. The position of the house didn’t change, nor did the idea of a long retaining wall or the overall program. But by abandoning the “moth” they could make the house smaller and simpler, and therefore easier and cheaper to build. Very quickly they settled on the idea of cladding the top of the building with corrugated iron. In essence, the top floor of the house is a plywood box, with a corrugated-iron screen nailed to it.
The corrugated-iron siding came from a former brewery in nearby Thames. They only discovered it at the last minute after months of looking. It is heavier than the modern stuff and beautifully aged, giving the house a permanence and a weight.
The corrugated-iron siding came from a former brewery in nearby Thames. They only discovered it at the last minute after months of looking. It is heavier than the modern stuff and beautifully aged, giving the house a permanence and a weight.
Behind the screen, the top floor of the house — which contains two simple bedrooms — is almost completely closed, except for small blade windows that open in the facade, allowing light and air in, as well as a glimpse of the view. Other architects might have been tempted to punch holes in it for windows, but not the Herbsts.
“We just had this really pure geometry, and we could feel it in the drawings, how it was floating off the ground,” Lance says. “It became really apparent that we wanted to keep that skin really taut, all the way around.” And, Nicola notes, the agrarian structures the house references would never have had windows in them. “And they’re beautiful for that reason — the shape isn’t disturbed by arbitrary apertures.”
“We just had this really pure geometry, and we could feel it in the drawings, how it was floating off the ground,” Lance says. “It became really apparent that we wanted to keep that skin really taut, all the way around.” And, Nicola notes, the agrarian structures the house references would never have had windows in them. “And they’re beautiful for that reason — the shape isn’t disturbed by arbitrary apertures.”
The solid top also allowed them to make the bottom very open, despite the fact that the house sits on a very open ridge in an area where winter storms bring gale-force winds. The owners were particularly worried about this, having watched whole houses get torn to shreds farther up the valley.
In response, the Herbsts engineered the house to hurricane level. The wood posts between the windows have external (and weathered, of course) steel plates, which give them additional strength, as do the steel cross-braces across each window.
In response, the Herbsts engineered the house to hurricane level. The wood posts between the windows have external (and weathered, of course) steel plates, which give them additional strength, as do the steel cross-braces across each window.
The Herbsts often try to design a house with one solid wall, usually in a living area, to give a sense of enclosure and containment. This house has none of that, yet the ground-floor living area doesn’t feel exposed. Instead, the living area is two steps down from the kitchen and dining area, and its centerpiece is a concrete fireplace, beside which the owners’ dog curls up at night. Above, the wooden space is enclosing and comforting, rising up above your head. “Because it’s so heavy, the full weight of that roof traps space below it,” Lance says. The result is that even in a howling storm — and there have been a few since the house was completed — the owners feel snug and comfortable.
During the summer months, the living areas open up completely to the elements with sliding wood-and-glass doors. The kitchen is simple, with open wood shelving and a solid wood counter, built by Purvis’ partner, cabinetmaker Kirsty Winter.
The owners spent months sourcing everything from the Oregon pine trusses in the living room to secondhand faucets. Once the materials were on-site, an engineer had to strength-test each piece. Every beam in this house has been pored over by building inspectors to make sure it’s strong enough.
Elsewhere, materials were left outside to weather naturally. The steel reinforcing plates and cross-braces on the downstairs windows were allowed to rust naturally for a few months and then left alone, rather than being cleaned up and painted.
The owners spent months sourcing everything from the Oregon pine trusses in the living room to secondhand faucets. Once the materials were on-site, an engineer had to strength-test each piece. Every beam in this house has been pored over by building inspectors to make sure it’s strong enough.
Elsewhere, materials were left outside to weather naturally. The steel reinforcing plates and cross-braces on the downstairs windows were allowed to rust naturally for a few months and then left alone, rather than being cleaned up and painted.
In the bathroom,Purvis treated copper panels with acid, which aged them in a particular way: They match the wood hues of the wall linings elsewhere in the house. All the fixtures were secondhand.
Between the living area and the retaining wall, behind the sliding wood door you can see here, is “the cave,” an enclosed space that runs along the back of the house and extends beyond it. “They wanted a kind of in-between space between inside and outside, but quite utilitarian, for the washing of vegetables, the hanging of meat, letting the dogs hang out if the weather is bad,” Nicola says. “It’s like an outside mudroom. That’s the quirk — the rest of the house is very rectilinear and very constrained.”
Here, the floor is made from a quirky layer of half-rounds, made from the same treated pine as the retaining wall behind it. It was, Lance says ruefully, supposed to be a quirky and easy way of lining the floor in the mudroom that didn’t just involve pouring a concrete slab, but it turned out to be the opposite.
The builders laid foot-long lengths of pine on their ends, then packed them with a dry mix of concrete before applying water and leaving it to set. Each piece had to be cut individually, and each end had to be perfectly flat so that it didn’t create an uneven walking surface — a Sisyphean task that no one anticipated. It was worth it, though. The cave has a wooden, warm sort of feeling, where a concrete floor would have been hard and noisy.
The builders laid foot-long lengths of pine on their ends, then packed them with a dry mix of concrete before applying water and leaving it to set. Each piece had to be cut individually, and each end had to be perfectly flat so that it didn’t create an uneven walking surface — a Sisyphean task that no one anticipated. It was worth it, though. The cave has a wooden, warm sort of feeling, where a concrete floor would have been hard and noisy.
The house is increasingly self-sufficient too. The owners grow a lot of their own food, while trees on the property provide firewood for heating. Rainwater is gathered on the roof and stored in massive tanks under the house, while sewage is also treated on-site — a common solution in many parts of New Zealand. While it is connected to the grid for its electricity, solar panels up the hill power its hot water, and the owners may take the house completely off the grid in the future.
Since the house was finished in 2015, the owners have spent more and more time there. Initially, their idea was that this would be a second home that they would retreat to every now and then. Instead, they’ve traded their house in Auckland for a small apartment, retreating to the Kauaeranga Valley for longer and longer periods.
And they recently asked the Herbsts to come back and design a second cabin on the property for guests.
Browse more homes by style:
Apartments | Barn Homes | Colorful Homes | Contemporary Homes | Eclectic Homes | Farmhouses | Floating Homes | Guesthouses | Homes Around the World | Lofts | Midcentury Homes | Modern Homes | Ranch Homes | Small Homes | Townhouses | Traditional Homes | Transitional Homes | Vacation Homes
And they recently asked the Herbsts to come back and design a second cabin on the property for guests.
Browse more homes by style:
Apartments | Barn Homes | Colorful Homes | Contemporary Homes | Eclectic Homes | Farmhouses | Floating Homes | Guesthouses | Homes Around the World | Lofts | Midcentury Homes | Modern Homes | Ranch Homes | Small Homes | Townhouses | Traditional Homes | Transitional Homes | Vacation Homes
Who lives here: The filmmaking couple split their time between this rural retreat and their Auckland, New Zealand, apartment
Location: Kauaeranga River, on the Coromandel Peninsula, North Island of New Zealand
Designer: Herbst Architects
It is a simple, elemental life in a valley that a century or so ago was a bustling rural community with a small private railway that ran through the valley, and a tunnel in the hill, to transport the kauri trees that were logged from the hills. These days, there’s a settler museum, the tunnel through the hill and little else. The hills are slowly returning to scrub and native bush.