Where mysteries live | Architecture Now

There are locations that appear dream-like, haunted by reminiscences and fantastical tales: locations with an environment that comes from someplace mysterious. For these of us introduced up in Canterbury, this place is the excessive nation, the mountains that loom distant on the horizon past the flat monotony of the plains. Up there may be the place mysteries reside.

Within the Craigieburn Vary, on the best way as much as Arthur’s Move, a moa was sighted within the bush in 1993; the declare was accompanied by the obligatory grainy photograph, making nationwide information for weeks on finish. Additionally, within the Craigieburn Vary is the jumble of unusual, sculptural limestone blocks scattered throughout the hills, Kura Tawhiti, Citadel Hill. A Nineteenth-century customer, Reverend Charles Oakes, described them as “… just like the buildings of a Cyclopean metropolis”, and “… solitary plenty like the large monoliths of Stonehenge”.

A singular world, irresistible to film-makers, it has develop into the setting for movies like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings: a dreamscape of the creativeness. Past the ranges, to the south, is the place Samuel Butler set his 1872 novel Erewhon. Erewhon, an anagram of nowhere, was the story of a utopia, set within the Canterbury excessive nation; an enigmatic place deep within the mountains, heralded by unusual, gigantic statues of males, which howl within the wind.

You journey into these mountains on the delicate thread of State Freeway 73 over Porters Move and down into this different world. You proceed previous the Cyclopean metropolis ruins, by the densely bush-clad saddles, with Erewhon over the ranges to the south, previous Lake Pearson — a lonely hourglass lake surrounded by austere yellow-brown and gray mountains peering impassively down. You then attain Cass, a railway settlement remoted and dominated by the land looming throughout. There’s the melancholy pink Cass railway station made iconic by the 1936 Rita Angus portray, which was voted New Zealand’s biggest portray in 2006. This work has now develop into emblematic of the Canterbury excessive nation.

Amidst this world of magic and creativeness is the high-country station of Flock Hill, established in 1857. It’s a 14,000-hectare farm that stretches throughout mountain ranges, huge valleys and dark-green, bush-clad hillsides. Flock Hill was purchased a number of years in the past by a bunch of Individuals who’re slowly remodeling it right into a luxurious vacation spot for well-heeled guests. They had been undoubtedly attracted by this mesmerising panorama and the picture of New Zealand as an untouched Eden: a pure world, clear and inexperienced with breathtaking surroundings. It’s a spot of peace and quiet, disconnected from the stresses of the up to date world, and a spot to decelerate, and to really feel embedded and half of a bigger, mysterious and awe-inspiring world of silent mountains, nonetheless lakes, framed skies and valleys disappearing into the desires of distance.

It’s right here that Warren and Mahoney has designed a lodge: a retreat from which to look out onto and by which to really feel immersed inside this chic world. Secure, cocooned and hunkered down, it seems out on the sublimity past, like a determine in a Caspar David Friedrich portray.

The journey to the lodge is fastidiously orchestrated. You flip off State Freeway 73 and, after passing over a bridge, you wind your means by a collection of pink farm buildings, unpretentious cousins of the Cass railway station, talking amongst themselves of their previous as utilitarian buildings servicing this high-country run.

You permit them behind and ascend the slope, climbing to a plateau above. Round a bend, you see it, low and spreading, on the sting of the financial institution. You loop round and method from the rear. The sequence is fastidiously thought-about, hiding then hinting at and teasing what’s to return. You enter a forecourt between a pair of gatehouses, rumbling throughout cobbles and, then, the crunch of gravel. Sound, texture, visible anticipation and haptic sensation put together you to enter the lodge itself. The principle view is masked by the constructing and you’re drawn to discover, getting into by the symmetrically positioned, stable timber door. You end up in a lowly lit entry corridor and the teasing continues, with a concrete wall immediately in entrance of you. Lastly, as you progress round this wall, the view is revealed, taking your breath away. The austere panorama stretches away beneath, previous Lake Pearson to the conical Sugarloaf Peak past, framed on both aspect by mountain ranges, sentinels quiet and detached to the minor detritus of mankind beneath — the scratch of a highway and some scattered farm buildings misplaced within the vastness. The lodge takes full benefit of this sight, stretching all main rooms in a row alongside the ridge, sharing it equally collectively underneath a deceptively easy gabled type. You simply need to chill out, pour a whisky, sink into one of many couches, really feel time sluggish and permit the rhythms of the pure world to take over.

Architecturally, the constructing is about its place and a need to be a part of this panorama, and part of Aotearoa, its historical past and tradition. It’s as if the Kiwi farm buildings, mountain huts and shearing sheds have been pulled aside, their essence analysed and reframed, after which reconstituted in a thought-about means. Their purposeful, vernacular, workaday character has been re-imagined. The linings have been eliminated and the ever-present Kiwi timber body is uncovered and expressed within the roof above.

The stable partitions dividing house are principally masonry, superbly conceived and constructed from individually poured layers of pigmented concrete, evoking the distinctive limestone buildings of the realm. The coverings that sometimes masks what’s inside are eliminated; there isn’t any plasterboard wherever and nearly no paint. It’s what it’s. Every part is outsized to offer a generosity of scale. Excessive ceilings and three-metre cantilevered eaves take the vernacular and scale it up, lifting it from its utilitarian origins to one thing particular. Edges are thinned out, with a roof of dark-coloured standing-seam Colorsteel, utilising a double-gutter system to attain a superb edge to the overhanging, low-pitched gable roof. Together with the sharp edges of the metal columns, this lightness contrasts with the load of the large concrete buttress partitions anchoring the construction to the floor.

Most of the fixtures and furnishings are Kiwi, with regionally made beds, joinery and light-weight fittings, and even the crockery was made specifically for the lodge. It’s a extremely refined and opulent model of Kiwiana: a chic shed, a grand back-country hut. There’s a sort of alchemy in its transformation of the utilitarian into luxurious.

But, there are just a few jarring notes. Small patches of manicured garden and international deciduous bushes communicate of an imported imaginative and prescient of what a luxurious resort must be. The constructing sits demurely, considerably again from the sting of a precipice: not a alternative of the architects who had been after the drama of really perching on the sting, overlooking this magical land beneath. However these are minor quibbles and, total, the lodge is a superbly conceived answer to the difficult challenge of place a brand new construction inside this legendary panorama. It does this by reflecting the qualities of the place in a delicate means, with out awkward intrusion. The low-slung, hunkered-down type stretches horizontally in lengthy cantilevers, Frank Lloyd Wright-like. Manufactured from pure supplies whose colors and textures merge into the setting, it’s a sympathetic addition to the panorama that enhances quite than detracts.

Surrounded by a superbly crafted and constructed high-country hut, guests really feel immersed in a panorama of antipodean desires and creativeness. Not the nowhere place of Erewhon, this lodge is, as an alternative, rooted to its place, this Aotearoa panorama haunted by myths and tales. It’s a place of tranquillity, a spot that permits well-off guests the luxurious to dream. The Citadel Hill limestone monoliths, Kura Tawhiti, like mysterious, pure Rapa Nui moai, are the gatekeepers to this place, talking of instances previous and imagined. If the wind is true, you would possibly hear the lonely name of a distant prepare pulling into the Cass railway station means off down the valley. And, because the night gentle dims and the quiet descends, you can virtually think about that moa do nonetheless exist within the dense, dark-green mountainsides of the Craigieburn Vary shut by.