Introduction: The Essence of Pavilion Architecture

As residential design evolves, the revival and reinterpretation of the modern pavilion typology have emerged as a response to clients’ growing desire for deeper connections with nature, restrained material palettes, and spatial clarity. In Te Mānia, Stevens Lawson Architects masterfully reimagine the residential pavilion as both sculptural object and immersive landscape experience. Situated in New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay, this award-winning residence demonstrates how radical spatial zoning, material authenticity, and environmental integration can converge to redefine contemporary domestic life.

Contextual Placement: A Home Anchored by Nature

Te Mānia is located at the foot of Te Mata Peak in the Tukituki Valley—a rural region bordered by orchards, stone outcrops, and the braided Tukituki River. The project addresses the site with remarkable sensitivity, drawing from the topography and natural drama of its surroundings to define both the architectural language and spatial sequencing.

Importantly, the home is split into two discrete structures across the site: a lightweight, extroverted living pavilion and a semi-buried, introspective sleeping house. This division goes beyond functional separation—encouraging occupants to physically traverse through nature as part of their daily routine. In doing so, it not only heightens spatial awareness, but also reconnects domestic rituals with diurnal and seasonal rhythms.

Pavilion Typology: Open, Spatially Expressive, and Landscape-Driven

Pavilion-style homes are rooted in modernist principles, emphasizing visual transparency, structural clarity, and close proximity to nature. They typically feature extensive glazing, flat or low-pitched roofs, floating planes, and thoughtful site orientation. Te Mānia amplifies these traits in both tectonic and experiential ways.

The central volume, known as “The Te Mānia Room,” performs as the home’s theatrical and functional core. It’s a social nucleus—hosting dining, cooking, and gathering—with all sides engaging views through fully retractable Vitrocsa sliding doors. Operable walls dissolve the perimeter, allowing the architecture to become a canopy amidst the landscape.

Conversely, the sleeping house recedes into the terrain. It’s introverted, contemplative, and materially cooler, accessed only by walking through a stretch of open land. This act of crossing the site introduces a built-in meditative quality—ritualizing retreat and separating public life from private restoration.

Zoning: Spatial Discipline Meets Experiential Richness

Architects have long wrestled with spatial separation in residential design—from Mies van der Rohe’s unified Farnsworth House to the adaptable California Case Study Houses. But Stevens Lawson’s solution is more radical: not just separating functions, but physically distancing them. There is no central foyer or traditional “front door”; rather, movement is choreographed across earth and stone.

This zoning logic disrupts standard notions of residential convenience, instead advocating for a more continuous dialogue with site. It creates a heightened sensorial experience while elevating the role of landscape as an active, connective medium rather than passive backdrop.

Material Strategies: Honesty, Durability, and Regional Expression

Living Pavilion (“Te Mānia Room”)

• Cladding: Weathering steel (Corten), rich with rust-hued patina, resonant with the red ochres of New Zealand’s soil and volcanic rock.
• Interiors: Waxed raw steel walls add a moody reflectivity and sense of mass.
• Flooring: Large-format natural slate slabs offer tactility and robust performance.
• Ceilings: Australian spotted gum, a nod to the client’s family roots and a warm counterpoint to the slate and steel.
• Glazing: Vitrocsa minimal-frame sliders, designed to pocket fully into wall cavities—allowing uninterrupted views and open-air living.
• Feature Anchors: A solid masonry fireplace and a black granite kitchen island that extends outdoors as a built-in barbecue define corners of domestic activity without enclosure.

Sleeping Pavilion

• Primary Material: In-situ cast concrete, functioning as thermal mass, acoustic insulator, and metaphorical retreat.
• Finishes: Light oak panelling, moss green accents, and white finger tiles soften the massiveness of concrete and evoke tranquility.
• Sustainability Features: Green roofs and surrounding earth berms improve insulation, reduce runoff, and dissolve building edges into the field.

Architecture Entwined with Landscape

Te Mānia doesn’t just sit on the land, it weaves into it. The architectural forms echo local geography—angular volumes reflect the ridgelines of Te Mata Peak; apertures slice deep into walls, framing curated vistas of the river or hills.

The landscape isn’t merely seen; it’s experienced. Circulation flows outdoors, transitions occur without thresholds, and the building intentionally offers no universal axis or singular facade—aligning more with natural topographies than human-conceived geometry. It’s a modern form of whakawhanake—ongoing development via dialogue with place—a principle rooted in Māori relationships with land.

Building Techniques and Environmental Performance

• Thermal Regulation: The sleeping house benefits from high thermal mass (concrete) and subterranean insulation, while the living space leverages passive ventilation through operable openings and a solar-responsive orientation.
• Minimal Maintenance: Corten steel and slate weather gracefully, requiring little upkeep—ideal for exposed rural environments.
• Green Infrastructure: Restoration planting, gentle grading, and green roofing mitigate ecological disturbance and visual encroachment.

International Context: Pavilion Precedents and Adaptations

The pavilion typology has a wide architectural lineage across hemispheres:

Te Mānia doesn’t merely adopt this lineage—it pushes the typology forward by intensifying disconnection (to connect more deeply), heightening material contrasts, and prioritizing landscape over aesthetic symmetry.

Lessons for Architects and Homeowners

• Radical Zoning as Design Tool: Physical separation of living and sleeping not only enhances privacy but allows design to fully exploit the site’s environmental and experiential possibilities.
• Landscape as Threshold: Entry through terrain—not foyers—shifts perception of home from enclosure to encounter.
• Material Honesty: Leave weathering materials exposed; their patina adds depth and regional specificity without decorative excess.
• Responsive Detailing: Employ high-performance glazing and cavity-pocketed doors to blur boundaries and adapt to seasonal shifts.
• Precedent Adaptation: Study precedent but respond to the local site—climate, geography, cultural history—for truly resonant architecture.

For homeowners: Te Mānia suggests reconsidering the basics—what if privacy came from disconnection, not walls? What if luxury arose from immersion in nature, not square footage? Consult your architect about zoning, journey, and relationship to ground when designing your next home.

Conclusion: A Pavilion That Lives with the Land

Te Mānia synthesizes a deep architectural intelligence with reverence for its place. It stands not merely as a house, but as a model for how built form can honor, echo, and engage existing landscapes. In an architectural context shifting toward environmental integration and authenticity, Te Mānia shows that pavilion homes—when executed with vision—remain essential tools for anchoring domestic life in nature.

For architects, it affirms the continued relevance of formal clarity, spatial experimentation, and site-specific poetics. For homeowners, it offers inspiration to step outside conventional typologies and let the land help shape how life is lived.