To the south, through the sea spray haze, you can just make out the headland of Muriwai Beach. To the north, however, Rangitiri Beach stretches to a point, somewhere in the direction of the Kaipara Harbour's South Head.
This is the view from the new home of Sarah Sutherland and Dougall Watt, high on the hill on Wilson Road, South Head. ?The arrow-straight beach seems to pull all the features inland from it into parallel alignment; the endless strip of Woodhill Forest, the long, skinny Lake Kerata, the inland main road.
It has also inspired the architects Fearon Hay who designed this home; it is a rectangular box, with its two long sides aligned perfectly to the beach - and everything else. The symmetry doesn't end there, either. Inside the two 'pods' mirror each other at each end of the building, with identical fireplaces set into each one. ?The orientation of the building means that it breaks the rules in terms of facing north, yet the measures put into the house for passive solar heating, energy efficiency and insulation means it doesn't matter - it is warm year-round with minimal heating input.
The building is also ahead of its time in that it is off-the-grid, yet effortlessly runs all of the modern conveniences with power to spare. ?It's an obvious source of pride for Sutherland and Watt, who before they built this home spent two years painstakingly restoring a re-located Remuera house boasting 13 rooms and four bathrooms. That house sits at the foot of the hill from their new home, and can be seen from their lawn - a constant reminder of the contrast to the simplicity of their current dwelling.
The Fearon Hay house, most strikingly, is a glass house. Exterior cladding just doesn't exist; the walls are 93% glass. Both sides (the long bits of the rectangle) are made of several sliding panes of about five square metres in size and weighing over 250kg each.
