84 | Semester Studio ARCHITECTURE Embracing the outdoors The Co-Living Garden Shed transcends traditional notions of gardens and rooms, seamlessly blending indoor and outdoor spaces. T T Bernadette Cooney Rethinking the Kiwi home for new types of families and ways of living is the aim of a modern house planned for a section bordering the jewel in the crown of Christchurch heritage architecture, Riccarton House & Bush on Kahu Road. Taking cues from the early Pakeha settler’s cottage and Victorian and Edwardian homestead nearby - gifted to the city by The Deans founding family - this distinctive contemporary design not only envisions the future, but also explores what it is to be quintessentially Kiwi. The brainchild of the collaborative genius between design architects, Semester Studio and Christchurch architecture office Sheppard & Rout, the 300 sq. mt home transcends traditional notions of gardens and rooms, seamlessly blending indoor and outdoor spaces. The Co-Living Garden Shed is a simple, timber-framed home on concrete pads, capped with sloped metal roofing. “The materials have an honest frugality about them and are playfully arranged with an openable side facing out to a public reserve and the living spaces configured around four garden courtyards” says Semester Studio architect Yun Fu. Moving through the house is like a stroll in nature and the interior is devoid of hallways. “Rooms are arranged as interconnected spaces organised around pieces of furniture,” “There is always more than one way to reach a room,” he says. “Allowing residents to live and work separately or together.” Bi-fold courtyard doors allow the house and garden to be opened or closed without losing access to air or natural light. Independently accessible sleeping spaces are on the second floor to offer privacy. A home where families or friends can live and work together as life evolves says Yun Fu. The project is consented, and it’s hoped the building could commence later this year dependent on final costings. Yun Fu’s relationship with David Sheppard, founding partner of at Sheppard & Rout stretches back to when David first mentored Yun before embarking on his studies. Having spent his childhood in a Sheppard &Rout house in Christchurch where his parents still live, Yun Fu went on to train in Sydney, Beijing, London and Rome receiving numerous awards and a doctoral degree from Harvard, where he now teaches at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “David Shepphard, Jonathan Kennedy and Tapanga McGregor, as well as Rick Bennett and Brad Bannan were extremely generous in collaborating with us and sharing our interest in rethinking the familiar Kiwi home,” he says. Semester Studio is a partnership between Yun Fu, Wenting Guo and Manus Leung, former classmates at Harvard. Wenting Guo trained as a rocket scientist and industrial designer, before joining Google’s Lab division and Manus Leung, based in Sydney and Hong Kong was recruited straight out of school by David Chipperfield Architects as project architect on Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum, Shanghai. British designer David Chipperfield, renowned for his quiet yet powerful spaces, won the Pritzker Prize in 2023, dubbed the Nobel Prize of Architecture. RMM was delighted to work with Semester Studio to provide landscape architectural expertise for this innovative project. Landscape Architecture | Urban Design | Landscape Planning
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