Lyall Bay Apartments | Wellington

Lyall Bay Apartments | Wellington

The proposal was to demolish two existing suburban houses and construct four new apartments on the steep site with garaging at street level. To minimise the building profile, platforms with a footprint of 77m2 were excavated into the slope of the land. Each two-level apartment had a 2.6m eastern facing terrace set back from each neighbouring apartment across the section frontage. The upper living level connects to outdoor open space on the north side. The floor-to-floor dimension of the apartments is kept low (approximately 5m including mezzanine) to minimise the external bulk of the new buildings. Access is gained by cable car as well as stairs on grade. The sloping facade of warm roof membrane and glass is pitched to match the slope of the land. A lamella roof plane of timber dowels shades the glazed area and unifies the dwellings into a vertical form that sits comfortably with the slope of the land.