Cabin In The Woods 2.0 - An Architect's Amazing Vision

if right now you're dreaming of escaping to a beautiful remote Wilderness Haven then this one's for you we're about to visit a beautiful architecturally designed cabin that could take your breath away [Music] hey Andrew how's it going mate good good to meet you welcome to Biv thank you very much it's great to be here and what an incredible place this is yeah thank you it's an awesome little batch it's been a bit of a collaboration between my brother and local architect and myself so it's really good to see it actually finished yeah the place itself just has such a striking aesthetic can you talk to me a little bit about the design inspiration for this absolutely my brother he's an architect and I think he likes to make things as simple as possible so he had little cardboard models and he modeled it after a minus Hut so the miners Hut on the west coast have corrugated iron steep chimneys kind of very very simple houses so this is kind of modeled after that as well it's got no spouting no curtains not much storage inside so he's tried to make it as minimal as possible I always wanted to build a small house in New Zealand to most New Zealand Architects single houses are the purest form of architecture and closest to our hearts so to me this cabin was an opportunity to intersect between creating good design reconnecting with New Zealand and generating a side income and the location here is just mind-blowing I mean the West Coast it's almost like going back in time when you're here isn't it yeah exactly so we're at punakaiki we're halfway between Greymouth and the South and Westport in the north about 45 K's away from each but West Coast is not very populated so Greymouth only got 10 000 people westport's only got five thousand and here we are stuck in the middle so if you if you haven't bought your milk you've got a long 45 K's to go and buy milk but worth it to be in a spot like this isn't it yeah it's well known here for the pancake rocks so this is an all Limestone here and it was pushed out of the ocean millions of years ago so it's all Limestone and the pancake rocks are weathered rocks that kind of look like stacks of pancakes but also here we're close to the peperoa national park so that's the 10th great walk of New Zealand and can you tell me about the materials that you've used here so the exterior is very very simple there's only really one or two materials on the exterior so this is aluminum tray that goes envelops the whole house comes down the sides and Down the Walls and there's no guttering no spouting at all which is quite unique and then on the front here we've just got some cedar and some purple heart Deccan beautiful it's just created such a great look to the home it's very simple but very classy isn't it yeah exactly try to strip away everything we can there's no gutters on the outside just like inside there's no curtains and what size is the cabin so the cabin itself is just under 50 square meters so about 46 square meters and there's a mezzanine upstairs which adds another six square meters so it's pretty small well I'm just so excited to see what you've done on the inside of this cabin can we take a look yeah let's go all right before it rains again yeah exactly wow this is stunning especially with that really steep angle of the roof it's quite a dramatic entrance to this home isn't it yeah absolutely so the front door is quite intentionally small and if suddenly you think you're coming into a cave but it just opens up here into this big cavernous space yeah absolutely and with all of this glazing in here it really does allow you just to take full advantage of the spectacular views from this place yeah absolutely so the views out from the dining room from the lounge and through the bedroom and the bath are just all fabulous and it takes real advantage of the fact that we're on quite a steep section here as well so you get almost these tree house-like views from here yeah we are very steep here so we've got a bit of the house here touching the ground but the rest of this what I'm standing on here all the way out is actually above the ground right and we drop away down there outside the bedroom probably 10 meters down it's quite a steep full and all sides so you do get a very good view to the top of the nikau Palms yeah brilliant and the materials that you've used in here are just so nice it really carries that very Elemental feeling with the polished concrete floors and then the solid Timber walls as well yeah very simple it's quite hard to do simple well but there's not many elements in here so there's the timber framing uh concrete floor no skirtings so everything's stripped back to bare minimum yeah and can you talk to me about the wall system because it's quite unusual the way that you've done this isn't it yeah so the wall system here all of the Timber that we see around is CLT so cross laminated Timber and this here this wall is three layers and the roof section is five layers of Timber all laminated together and then they were built off-site and all cut precisely and then lifted onto site so it took two days to assemble the house effectively wow but you might think that that's all there is to it but the actual insulation through the external walls is a little bit light so on top of this here there is insulation 50 mL of insulation cavity battens for a gap 12 will apply and then the cladding on the outside so in total the wall is probably almost 30 centimeters thick on the outside wow so that is super insulated there absolutely yep after all it's super insulated low maintenance so no guttering because there's a lot of native trees around here dropping there litter all year so there's no guttering to block or fill up so it just all drains off the house naturally fantastic because building in the bush like this does really present those challenges hey you've got the moisture to deal with and you've got a lot of debris as you said so keeping the Steep angle of the roof and things like the metal exterior and super insulated spaces just make living in the bush possible and pleasant yep exactly so we're quite close to the ocean so we get sea spray so in the external cladding is made out of aluminum so it won't rust we also in a high wind zone so it's really good that the house just hunkers down here extremely solid so the ground actually we're on here rose out of the ocean millions of years ago so it's Limestone so with that the limestones eroded away over the years so on this bit of ground here it's solid in one part but then there could be a big Tomo hole in another part so a big basically a void in the in the earth so they've done 10 big piles 10 concrete piles filled with steel and concrete we've got a steel frame around the outside of the building and there's also one steel beam across here and one across the bedroom so underneath us is 200 mils of concrete and steel wow so it's solid that's very solid it's almost like you've built a bit of a bunker here there is a bunker yeah above ground bunker exactly and can you talk to me about what it was that inspired this project and how this actually came to be I grew up in Christchurch on the east coast of the south island with my brother my sister and my brother went to architecture school just straight out of school so he moved to Auckland worked in Auckland for a few years but then moved overseas so he spent 30 years overseas as an architect in Hong Kong and my family grew up on the west coast so my great great grandparents moved over here 150 years ago so they were on the coast and my Grandparents were here and my father was born and went to the high school and they would often holiday up at punakaiki here so this is a picture here actually of um my dad there 70 years ago but everybody in my family left the coast probably 40 odd years ago my grandparents died in the 80s so I think it was my brother just wanting to get a bit of land in New Zealand and also reconnect with the family history on the coast what an amazing Monument to construct in this place as well to sort of Honor all of that yeah it should be here for at least another 150 years knowing how Jolly solid it is without a doubt and having such high ceilings really just adds to this incredible sense of spaciousness and I love the way that you're fully capitalized on that with these incredible feature Windows yeah absolutely so we've got some quite dramatic Cliffs up through this one so in the evening the Sun hits those and they're wonderful to look at but the builders during construction they lifted in these big pieces up here for the to hold the triangle windows but they had to build that the first one was put in place and then Ken to leave it back and then these other segments were put into place and they're all kind of lock together in one frame and so when it meated up here it has to come exactly to the junction so there's absolutely zero margin of error for the builders so they did a really awesome job absolutely well nothing worth doing is easy and the results here certainly speak for themselves and I like the way that you've capitalized on the extra height in here by adding the mezzanine yeah exactly so there's plenty of skylights so the top Skylight and the roof is over two and a half meters long and a meter wide so that's at night time when you can see stars through there that's absolutely brilliant so you can just sit up there on the couch or fold it out into a nice bed and yeah it's really good and this lounge space just looks so cozy you've got the lovely wood stove there the leather couch and wow just looking right out onto that view that's right you get a nice fire going in the evening there you sit down here and you have a nice rum and coke the Sun comes in you watch a Setting Sun in the distance it's really fabulous now it's a bit of a miserable day today but these two sliders here they open right up and then it brings the view inside I've heard that occasionally you do have sunny days on the west coast it's always sunny on the west coast we just tell visitors that it's not Sunny just keep them away exactly keep the place to yourself fair enough to and in contrast to the rest of the home style you've got this incredibly retro rug yeah exactly so the whole house is quite subdued with its natural wood and its blacks but we wanted to pop a color and my grandparents used to have a rug and it was very bright and very well patterned and my father had that in his house and Christchurch so I grew up with that effectively but it was thread beer so we've managed to get an exact replica I love it so again it's just those little tires of family history that just make this place mean all that much more and with the fireplace there I really like the way that you've turned the chimney into a bit of a feature through that window there yeah absolutely we like symmetry I can see that it's like yeah I think it it's worked out really well I mean in some ways it would be nice to completely hide it but I mean honestly you have to have a chimney and a fire so you know there's no problem just highlighting it and then over here we have your kitchen yeah absolutely I mean it's it's not a massive kitchen but the place is only a small place so we've got everything we need there really to to cook a little meal I really like the way that you've used the dark Cabinetry in there to again sort of keep with that very kind of minimalist aesthetic while at the same time not drawing too much attention to the functional spaces in the home yeah absolutely I think whenever we ask my brother about anything it was always the answer was always black make it black so the kitchen there is black of course and that's continued up onto the ceiling here at the mezzanine and the goal behind that is to make this part of the area just kind of hunk it down so this part of the room is kind of vast and there's a big tearing ceiling but this has there's kind of a bit more comfortable it's got a lovely seat here so you can sit here you can have breakfast in the morning you can do some work if you want in the view outside is great so it's a really functional kind of space here and still a good amount of kitchen storage there I mean this is a space which has been designed as a holiday accommodation so having loads of storage and little nooks everywhere isn't really necessary here is it yeah exactly so you can fit everything we need in that kitchen no problem at all so the storage is overall pretty minimal but it just stops us bringing junk so it's just you just bring what you need I love that philosophy and the bedroom's over there can we check that out yep it's not fair to go not far to go oh wow again very simply done in here but exceptionally beautiful the way that that bed is positioned to just take full advantage of that massive feature window is so nice yeah we've got just a lovely sloping ceiling down there just to kind of capture that view particularly well and no framing around the glass also just kind of makes you feel as if you're a little bit outside yeah you've got to also make our Palm there just right outside that's just flowering today which is quite spectacular it certainly is and I can really see what you were talking about before in terms of that sense of height in this part of the house yeah although one challenge we had is we didn't want the bed awfully high so we actually built the framing of the bed to make it as minimal height as we could so we could still get our storage underneath but the bed isn't kind of way up near your waist because we just wanted it to be kind of easy to fall onto yeah great that you do have storage under the bed as well though yep so the storage is because people come with a few things don't they when you come you've got your night bag or whatever your pajamas so it's just a place people can get it out of the way without cluttering the walkways around here yeah very nice and we've got the bathroom in here yep let's have a look let's have a look oh I really like this room these darker tiles just make the space feel so cozy and welcoming eh yeah it's kind of almost like a cave in here yeah you've got the bath there and then it's just all about the view out there the Nikia Palm the big kneecap home growing up there you can just sit in that bath fill it up and relax such a touch of luxury and I think with the darker colors in here as well it really makes the green just explode out that window yeah it's just neon green almost so talking about color on the ceiling this is the only paint that we've got in the whole place and I think it's just to create a little bit of warmth in here yeah because it is so dark it is kind of nice and sits off the green as well with the red tone absolutely and you've got a great sized vanity here with a beautiful mirror feature as well yep back flip mirror if you're in the bath you can just have the LED of the mirror going on the LED under the counter there and it's just a nice amount of lighting yeah nice gentle soft lighting so you can create that yeah heavy wine lay in the bath and just chill perfect what more could you want and you've got the flashing toilet here too yep so the flushing toilet that goes down to a septic tank so we've got a big septic tank system because eventually the property it's two sections and it can have two houses two dwellings on each section great so potentially there could be four dwellings although that would be a long way into the distant future yeah but it all goes through to one main septic system fantastic good to have that future proofing eh yeah yeah very important and so how long has the project been finished now so the project completed about one year ago and this is a space that was primarily constructed as a family getaway as a place for your brother to visit when he comes to New Zealand this must just be such a magical place to have yeah exactly so my brother he'll come and visit when he can from Hong Kong with his family but that's maybe only once or twice per year so I'll try and get over here when I can as well and mum and dad of course but mum and dad are now into the 80s and maybe their Taste of my brother's taste are a little bit different sometimes they'd have a few more luxuries maybe a lazy boy in the corner fair enough too and this is obviously an amazing architectural project as well there's a lot of intricacy that's gone into this building it was a challenging site to work on can you talk to me about the cost that was involved in making all of this happen yeah so the build cost certainly wasn't cheap it was probably in the ballpark of 600 000 but it's designed to be a family place that's going to be on the coast for many many years so it's a small investment really and I mean especially for somebody like your brother who's an architect this was a real opportunity to create something very special to try out some unique and interesting design ideas and that always carries a price tag doesn't it yeah at the end of the day he's the client so he could do whatever he wanted effectively well I've designed projects in many countries often on a huge scale and budget and yet designing and building this tiny cabin has been the most rewarding project I've ever worked on when the money is limited and it's coming from your own pocket and the Project's personal then every detail is important and we spend a lot of time reducing and simplifying to save money and create a more pure vision and this honesty and integrity is paid off and the result is very satisfying and now all the hard work has done and you just get to sit back relax and enjoy the place and of course your brother now has his New Zealand bunker as well yeah exactly we'll light the fire we'll sit down together we'll have a rum and coke and we'll enjoy the view I think absolutely what a good plan yeah cheers well Andrew this really is such an amazing project that you and your brother have completed here this place just feels incredible to be in I love all of the attention to detail and the architecture the wonderful connection to the outdoors this really is just an amazing place to visit thank you so much for sharing that with me I'm pleased you could come and have a look around me as well yeah cheers this is an incredibly beautiful cabin but don't let its apparent Simplicity deceive you there is a tremendous amount of intricacy that's gone into making this place what it is and ultimately the result is spectacular and does everything that a cabin is supposed to do we live in this hectic world where we're always bombarded with stress and pressure and having a place like this where you can just relax have a bath enjoy nature wow the importance of that cannot be understated [Music]

Channel: Living Big In A Tiny House

Views: 1,278,308

Keywords: cabin, cabin design, architecture, home design, cabin in the woods, remote building, modern cabin, hut, gold miners hut, architect, living big in a tiny house, small space design

Id: 2PnbGCbcRYU

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023