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ColorCote® Case Study 13 - ZR8™ pre-painted metal roofing was chosen, by architect Lisa Webb, because it is ideal for the wide variance in temperatures and strong sunlight experienced in the Mackenzie country.

It may be referred to as the lake house, but it’s the craggy mountain peaks of the Barrier Range in the distance that draw the eye from this property on the western flanks of the Mackenzie country.

And it doesn’t take much imagination to see that their alpine majesty exerted a significant amount of influence on the design by Auckland architect Lisa Webb for this rustic home…..the roof, in particular. “You can’t help but be impressed by such a dramatic backdrop,” says Lisa, who was called on to draw up the holiday home at Lake Ohau by old university friend Janet Muir and her partner, builder Richard Brown.

The brief to Lisa was to design a simple structure that reflected the landscape and borrowed from traditional buildings found in the Mackenzie, especially the red-roofed barns and sheds scattered across the farms and sheep stations. It also had to be built on a budget of less than $100,000, which was very tight, even with Richard doing much of the construction himself.

Taking the shed theme as a guide, Lisa designed a three-bedroom house that uses both its structure and materials to reflect the natural surroundings; untreated, weathered wood for the timber batten-boarding, simple wood windows finished in white and corrugated steel for the roof. Painted red, of course. Most importantly, it had to be low maintenance, because Janet and Richard would only be visiting a few times each year.

Even on a tight budget, Lisa was able to create a house that has character, yet still fulfils the wishes of its owners. The drama is in the roofline.
“The roof is a really important feature of the house and is designed to reflect that dramatic landscape,” says Lisa. “Schematically it has to fit with those mountains, which were created out of the pressures in the earth that folded and compressed the land and I wanted the same sort of feeling in the shape of the roof.”

The design not only had to be aesthetically pleasing, but also very practical, because this part of the South Island can produce brutal winters, contrasted by savage summers. Temperatures can plummet to as low as -12°C in the winter and then hit highs in the top 30s during summer. Strong winds are also a feature of the Mackenzie basin, with gusts roaring off the mountains sometimes topping 100km/h.

ColorCote® ZR8™ pre-painted metal roofing was chosen because it is ideal for the wide variance in temperatures and strong sunlight experienced in the Mackenzie country. The red colour for the Lake Ohau house was chosen from the standard ColorCote® palette.

Lake Ohau Getaway, Mackenzie Country Photo Gallery