Lawrence

The Lawrence House has been built on a piece of subdivided farm land in the Wairarapa not far from Martinborough. At the beginning of the process we were looking to establish some constraints for the project.

In his 'lecture of territory' Ticino architect,Luigi Snozzi always questions the specific site location for its meaning by understanding;

1. 'The natural formation of the topography', and

2. 'The operations on the original natural landscape caused by human hands'

Natural process

The two converging streams flow west from the foothills, defining a ridge between. The historic kanuka bush had been cleared from the pasture land but had either regenerated or been wisely left in the gullies to control erosion from the water runoff.

Artificial process

The farmland of the Wairarapa was some of the first in NZ to be surveyed for the boundaries of European ownership. Within those farms further, almost arbitrary, subdivisions were marked out to contain the stock and manage the pasture. The paddocks had to respond to certain acreages to manage animal stock units; fence lines marked these boundaries, forming an artificial grid laid over the topography. (fig1)

The fence lines also formed the primary orientation for planting new trees. Lines of shelterbelts were planted along these boundaries; as they grew to maturity the fences often decayed as farms changed stock ratios and types to suit the market and were amalgamated or subdivided. The artificial boundary lines were now manifest as natural

vegetation lines.

‘The territory is the cultural landscape,

the field of former and future operations,

where genuine nature has been successively and unsentimentally made useful

and becomes culture during the process”. Snozzi

The new place

We used this analysis to generate some new conditions when we were searching for a place for the house. We found a natural amphitheatre sloping north between the two gullies and, by walking over the site with Francie and David discovered the best position within this amphitheatre for west view, north westerly shelter and morning sun. The geometry formed tangential circles between the two gullies (circle radius R) and the smaller amphitheatre

(circle radius R/2). We had found our order and used the artificial concentric geometry to set out the dwelling in the landscape among the site planting.(fig 2)

The radial plan of heavily-insulated walls form a backbone, retaining the gentle slope of the site. The fireplace retreat zones are set in the low thick walls to this southern side. Different scale spaces are excavated out of the ground and connected with ramps. Circulation takes place along the front of the kiwi lean-to roof where a galleria acts as a passive NE solar buffer zone and external courtyards provide sheltered living areas facing the curve of the gully. The long roof plane is systematically broken with uplifted clerestoreys to signal back and front door entries, and allow western light into the plan.

Reading our territory

Giancarlo De Carlo, another Genovese architect we reference, also believes in the revelatory capacity of reading a territory.

"If one is able to interpret the meaning of what has remained engraved, not only does one come to understand when this mark was made and what the motivation behind it was, but one becomes conscious of how the various events that have left their mark have become layered and how, through time, they have set off other events and have woven together our history.’

‘You show a long sequence of work 1992 – 2022 in a particular period of NZ architecture identity and cultural formation.I don’t think we add culture. I think you help point to something that is already present and you are opening it up in some way to allow others to have a dialogue with it “

Dr Michael Spooner . Dr Philosophy Juror, RMIT Practice Research Symposium. June 2024

Awards

NZIA Local Architecture Award, 2002

Publications

Walsh, J. (2007, March). Journey Man. House New Zealand. (03). pp. 89-104

Lawrence House: Houses in the Hinterland. (2003, May/June). Architecture NZ. pp. 56-57