Keep the trees
The footprint was set by the canopy line, not the boundary. Every major room frames a tree; the entry sequence threads through the existing planting rather than clearing it.
Recently completed
Treefold
A house built around the trees that were already there — and the way light moves through them across the day.
Treefold is a coastal home set into an established grove of pōhutukawa. The brief was straightforward in words and demanding in execution: keep the trees, settle the building quietly into the landscape, and design for slow living rather than spectacle.
The plan organises around a high-pitched living pavilion that opens fully to a sheltered north-facing court. Bedrooms and quieter rooms tuck behind, where dappled light filters through vertical timber screens and the planting reads as an extension of the interior.
Design approach
Three decisions that shaped Treefold.
One material, well-detailed
Vertical-board cedar carries the entire exterior. Stained dark to recede into the foliage, expressed with deep reveals at every opening so the timber reads as a continuous skin.
Light as a structural element
A faceted skylight runs above the central spine, throwing a moving line of daylight through the plan. By dusk the same volume reads as a lantern from the garden.
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