Pavilion in the sky
Solidly grounded on a steep hillside, this home transforms into a glass
and steel pavilion on the top levels, optimising its stunning outlook
Previous pages: Looking down on
Queenstown from on high, this
home is supported by massive stone
walls emerging from the ground,
with long horizontal topping beams
forming the floor plates at each level.
Above and facing page: Working
with a steep site, architect Francis
Whitaker cut into the face of the
hill to create a large basement that
includes the garage, a wine cellar,
and a lobby with a grand staircase
and lift to access the upper floors.
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The view from the top of Queenstown Hill is
truly breathtaking. However, its extremely steep
gradient was certainly an issue for the architect
who conceived this multi-level holiday home.
On his first visit to the site, architect Francis
Whitaker says it wasn’t clear how he was ever
going to build a house there.
“It’s an exceptionally difficult site – extremely
steep,” he says. “It’s the uppermost section of
the highest subdivision in Queenstown, so it
can never be built out. However, there was a
problem – we had no flat land to build on.”
Whitaker’s solution was to design a long
narrow form, just one room wide, and partially
submerge it into the hillside – following the
contours of the land.
“We had no brief from our clients for the look
of the house, but because of the spatial require-
ments and the large number of rooms, the house
simply became a series of narrow layers emerg-
ing out of the ground,” the architect says. “The
building actually generated itself. It’s the only
way it could exist.”
The initial phase of the project was to cut a
huge notch out of the hillside to create a flat and
stable platform for the house. Peter Campbell,