2025 Hawkes Bay/Gisborne Architecture Awards Winner
Te Mata House
Te Mata House is a finely tuned and sensitive response to its dramatic environment. Anchored by robust charcoal concrete block walls, the home emerges from the land with a calm and assured presence. A light, expansive roof with deep eaves floats above, extending to shelter in each direction and blurring the threshold between interior and exterior.The house unfolds through a sequence of spatial compressions and releases, moving from a partially sheltered veranda to a cloistered hallway, and culminating in a soaring glazed living pavilion. Throughout, the material palette is deliberately restrained: robust, low-maintenance and textural, balancing pragmatic needs with understated elegance. Native grasses softly edge the home, bedding it into its borrowed rural setting and ensuring each room remains closely attuned to the valley’s rhythms.Te Mata House strikes a poetic balance between grounded permanence and delicate lightness, maintaining a continuous dialogue with the Tukituki Valley and Rongokako beyond.
- Practice
- Rowe Baetens Architecture Ltd
- Category
- Housing
- Location
- Gisborne/Hawkes Bay
