Acclaimed architect Tim Hay knows how to make a statement. As one half of the award-winning Fearon and Hay Architects, he has a slew of high-profile homes here and overseas to his credit.
But it is his own family home that is the current focus of his attention: Hay and his wife Alison are selling up. Their impressive house at 23 Foster Road, in Kumeu, on Auckland rural fringe, is for sale by way of deadline treaty, closing November 26.
This personal project is the home that Tim built for his wife Alison, for her horses, and for their family-to-be, when they bought this 4ha land about 20 years ago.
Alison was the client here, bringing her critical eye for functionality to the drawing board. Together with Tim’s “poetic” response with “one singular, powerful gesture on the landscape”, they’ve woven the essence of family life into the fabric of the place they call “The Long House”.
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The house designed to blend in with landscape. Photo / Supplied
This moniker needs no explanation. This single-level four-bedroom home, which is being marketed for sale by Harcourts agent Damien Henaghan, is about 50 metres long and anchored to its surroundings above and beyond. Its entry is at ground level at one end. Its dramatic end point at the opposite end, is the living area that hovers above the land, near the Ahukuramu stream end of their boundary.
It was the strong green hues and textures of the surrounding bush which led to Tim’s choice of copper roofing and exterior cladding. He knew that its equally strong emerging patina would perfectly complement their surroundings.
Called The Long House, the Hay family home 50 metres in length. Photo / Supplied
“As a material, copper is fascinating the way it responds to the environment. It mottles and changes and gets better with time and the change has been delightful to watch,” Tim says.
For the first few days, this shiny, copper house was “sunglasses material” until the first rain showers began the oxidising process. “It was awesome,” says Tim. Now the house has settled into their favourite “burnt, dark black patina”. Tim says “The house is frozen in that state. It hasn’t changed much at all.”
Hay choose copper for the exterior cladding. Photo / Supplied
Around the entry porch, dark-stained, rough-sawn Cedar cladding balances what Tim calls “the moodiness” of the aged copper.
Together those tones hint at the depth of interior colour, including their choice of durable, aged brass for their kitchen cabinetry.
Its deep, warm black patina has aged to reveal pleasing hints of rich gold underneath. “There is that sense of endurance about the copper and brass which we love, and they are low maintenance materials too,” says Tim.
At a key point in the house, Tim removed the views entirely with his introspective, central gallery/lobby near the bedrooms of their two school-age children. It is the dramatic pause before the big reveal in the living area where they gravitate to, to live among the changing seasons.
Alison Hay has competed in New Zealand Horse of the Year contests and her additional affinity to this land has been her Olympic-sized dressage arena and her multi-purpose, ivy-clad stables.
Alison and Tim are staying rural, as Tim feels over the pull of another project. A house a little less long perhaps? “Perhaps something more compact, he says.
Find out more about the house here:
