Three by the pond

This is a house made up of three separate structures gathered at the pond’s edge as if to gaze upon a swaying dinghy or the land beyond. Out there are the roches moutonnées: craggy, hummocky, grass-covered undulations formed eons ago by the weight of passing glaciers pushing and shaping the underlying bedrock into asymmetrical mounds. Past that, of course, are those bigger ‘mounds’ in the distance: The Remarkables and Coronet Peak.

“When we arranged the forms on site, framing views to the mountains helped to inform orientation,” says Prue Johnstone, who, at the time, worked for AW Architects and acted as project lead for this house. “The gabled form responds to the alpine