The View House
Set at the entrance to Lake Hāwea, directly opposite the long-standing local hotel, The View House was always going to be a building under scrutiny. Designed by Mark Warren of MJW Architecture for a multi-generational farming family, the brief was ambitious; every room should capture a view of the lake or mountain. The tight triangular footprint and necessary setbacks meant the layout would need to work very hard to achieve that goal.
Pre-Finished Birch for Wall & Ceiling Linings
A central courtyard became the key to the project’s success, allowing sightlines from all key spaces while offering shelter from the road and lakefront. Classique Pre-Finished Birch runs through the walls and ceilings in the surrounding rooms. It doesn’t read as a feature so much as part of the space's structure. Against the concrete floors and the dark charred larch, birch brings balance. Warmth and texture soften the hard surfaces and help to link indoors to out.
Installing Pre-Finished Plywood at Scale
Specifying pre-finished panels would simplify the build for those on the tools. Instead of sanding and coating on site, the plywood panels arrived ready to install, reducing time on the schedule and removing a variable from the process. Panelled ceilings have the potential to slow down a project, but ordering pre-finished negated that risk and kept things on track. The team at Lake Wanaka Building were able to fix the panels directly without a separate finishing stage, keeping momentum on a project with a substantial scope for lining.
Continuity By Design
The finished home carries light beautifully. As the sun moves, the birch ceilings and walls respond with subtle shifts in grain and tone, giving the interiors a sense of depth that a flat painted surface wouldn’t provide. Across large expanses, there’s continuity from one space to the next, but also substance to the material. The lining becomes part of the architecture rather than something applied to it.
Award-Winning Residential Architecture
With such a phenomenal display of a home being designed so suit its environment, it’s perhaps no surprise that The View House was named runner-up in the 2022 TIDA New Zealand Architect New Home of the Year awards and later awarded Rural Home of the Year 2023 by HOME magazine. The project is a great demonstration of how pre-finished plywood can be used at scale to create a consistent finish across large areas, while supporting a detailed architectural brief.
If you’d like to discuss pre-finished birch linings for a current project, contact our team, and they can provide samples and technical information to support your specification.
