This well-proportioned, elegant shed was simply delightful to experience from the moment the rural gateway at the start of a gravel drive was opened. It’s a ‘barn house’ – with ‘a place for the tractor downstairs and the farmworker above’ – and the design pays homage to the Waikato rural vernacular. Like a typical farm building, the house is self-sufficient and constructed with honest materials consistent with its context, including blonded plywood internal lining and profiled metal cladding on the exterior. The horizontal timber battens combined with hit-and-miss cedar sliding screens over the main windows provide filtered light to the interior spaces.