Cabinet of Curiosities / PRau Limited


© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond
  • Architects: PRau Limited
  • Location: Christchurch, New Zealand
  • Lead Architects: Phil Redmond
  • Team: Madeleine Clarke
  • Area: 504.0 m2
  • Project Year: 2018
  • Photographs: Hazel Redmond
  • Consultants: TM Consultants, Access Land Surveying

© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond

Text description provided by the architects. The brief was to design a new home on the site of the previous- lost in the Christchurch Earthquakes. A home that could house the client’s large art collection and desires to challenge local architectural conventions. The result is a cabinet of curiosities, housing her collections, archiving the lineage of the site, and referencing local and international architecture. A Home for art, art as Home.


© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond

Ground Floor Plan

Ground Floor Plan

© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond

Composed of gable pavilions with a gold-clad box balanced above, the space between forms a central gallery and circulation. A collection of painted characters shade this space digitized as perforated steel screens. Pavilions are compartmentalized into a series of living scales, from the large kitchen dining space to the reclusive homage room. Reinterpreted parameters of lost spaces, previous stud height, the glazed dining roof and excerpts of colonial language set the tone for the new form.


© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond

Playing with duality and the subversion of conventions, we have contrasted traditional local architectural typologies with contemporary form and materiality. The project re appropriates local architectural references of the Christchurch canons heavily figured concrete work from the 60’s and 70’s and international architects Scarpa, Siza, Scharoun, and Shinohara. A home as a cast, forming something other, something new.


© Hazel Redmond

© Hazel Redmond