Plans have been approved for an entity linked to Rod Drury to build a partly-sunken home with a guesthouse, pool and surf shed among sand dunes beside an upmarket golfing estate at Te Arai, north of Auckland.
The new home is to be built near the
Rod Drury entity wins consent for partly-sunken dune home with guest suite, pool, surf shed at Te Arai South
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His wealth was estimated to be $1.45 billion in last year’s NBR list of wealthy New Zealanders.
Many All Blacks including Beauden Barrett and wife Hannah, Kiwi golfing greats, ex-Prime Minister Sir John Key and son Max, Mark and Dominique Francis and others play at Tara Iti or Te Arai Links, a members-only golf club.
Billionaire Nick Mowbray and fiancée Jaimee Lupton also have plans to build at the property, where former United States President Barack Obama played a round with Key.
Consultants Boffa Miskell lodged an application for the new Drury house with Auckland Council to vary a consent granted two years ago at the upmarket golfing estate.
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Last month, that was approved.
A new home, pool, guest suite and an accessory building to house a boat and other equipment was consented to in 2023. But last September, Boffa Miskell told the council it wanted changes to the original consent because the scheme had altered.
“The applicant proposes to undertake changes to the site layout and the design of the main building on Lot 1,” Boffa Miskell’s assessment of environmental effects document said.
Duncan Cotterill and/or Nominee (Hawke’s Bay) was the applicant.
In 2021, the Herald reported on plans for a new home outside Queenstown where the applicant was also Duncan Cotterill Nominee (Hawke’s Bay).
The name R Drury was on that Queenstown application.
At Te Arai Links, Boffa Miskell’s document described an unusual home designed to blend seamlessly into the landscape so it would not look intrusive.
The use of natural colours in interiors and exteriors is planned.
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“The main feature of the building is a sunken lounge area with a large round skylight above. The roof of the building will be flat over curved shaped external walls with floor to ceiling glass windows and doors providing access to covered terraced areas and views across the public reserve to the coast,” it said.
Access to the building from the parking area will be via a buried entrance tunnel to the southern corner of the building.
Also wrapped around the southern corner and buried within the dune is a kitchen, bathroom and storage area and two bedrooms, each with their own ensuite bathroom.
These bedrooms will have direct external access to the west of the building, the scheme proposal said.
Architectural practice Monk Mackenzie indicated the home would be built in a dramatic setting.
“This single-storey private residence occupies the threshold between a stand of new-growth pines and an expansive dunescape. In response to the open, windswept site, the building is conceived conceptually as a single monolithic stratum, pushed low to the ground and hovering just above the surface of the sands,” plans said.
Beneath this monolithic plane, a private refuge would be formed in the compressed space between mass and earth.
The interior regularity contrasts with the curving dunes among which the building floats. Its materials throughout reflect the wood, sand and stone that are the foundation of the wooded coastline.
Heavy interior walls establish a haven within the seascape, while the light glass exterior allows for almost complete integration between interior and exterior and uninterrupted views of the Pacific Ocean, the architects said.
The primary living and private areas are surrounded by exterior courtyards, lightwells and introspective spaces.
In the Te Arai plans approved by the council, landscaping was by Jared Lockhart Design. DHC Consulting did engineering plans.
The house has been designed to blend with the landscape.
Boffa Miskell landscape architect Julia Wick said that through the proposed management of floor levels, earthworks and planting outlined in plans, the development could be sensitively integrated into the coastal landscape of Te Arai South.
Once established, the planting of native tree and shrub species will provide a strong and appropriate natural context for the building, complementing the existing vegetation on the surrounding dunes and, over time, replicating the enclosure and backdrop provided by the remnant pine trees to the southwest of the site, she wrote.
Proposed additional earthworks were substantial in volume. But these were required to lower the main building from 2023 plans and reshape the dunes to integrate the structures into the landscape, Boffa Miskell submitted.
No response was received from Drury when the Herald made an inquiry about the planned Te Arai home. Hamish Monk of Monk Mackenzie said: “I understand our client would rather keep the project private for now.”
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
