On the shores of Lake Rotoiti, this holiday home draws on the region’s rich geological history — from the magma deep beneath the earth’s surface to the mossy greens and pristine blues of the forest and lake.
Designed by DCA Architects with interiors by Yvette Jay, this is the second project the design team has completed for the same client. The first, on a nearby bay, provided the foundation for this home, allowing the ideas to be refined and distilled into a place of richly layered compositions.
“When we were part-way through the first build, the client, unbeknown to us, bought a site a couple of bays around. So this [project] became an opportunity to really refine the ideas from the first house,” Yvette explains.
This a place that embraces the intoxicating beauty of its surroundings: serene, pristine, and almost impossibly still. The house turns itself entirely towards the lake, opening onto an uninterrupted expanse of lawn, where fences are absent and property boundaries dissolve into the landscape. A solitary tree stands sentinel at the water’s edge, framing a slender jetty that reaches into the lake’s immense, mirror-like calm.
Designed for a couple who intend to spend increasingly long periods here as they approach retirement, it needed to function as a family bach, a home for two, and a place where larger groups could gather with ease.
Dark timber cladding gives way to extensive glazing, with the main kitchen and living area, together with the adjoining primary suite, framing panoramic views. A sheltered outdoor room is carved into the elevation, linking the bedroom and living spaces in a relaxed sequence of openness and connection.
Despite its effortless sense of calm, the interiors possess a quiet luxury articulated through a material palette of depth and tactility that began with the selection of stone for the kitchen. A substantial island is wrapped in a dramatic quartzite slab that Yvette describes as reminding her of “aerial views of Lake Rotoiti, with soft whites and greens, and steam rising from the water.”
Beyond, the splashback introduces a more dramatic note in Calacatta Da Vinci marble, where deep green is threaded through crisp white veining.
“It felt like the deep, silent waters set against lightning storms,” Yvette says.
Crown cut European oak veneer in a smoky finish frames the space, while gunmetal tapware from Plumbline completes the composition.
These tones, evoking forest and lake, continue throughout, taking on different expressions. In two of the guest bedrooms, textured green grass-cloth wraps the walls; the remaining rooms are enveloped in a muted, dusky blue.
The primary suite echoes the exterior cladding with a dark-stained timber slat wall behind the bed, while the en suite is a richly atmospheric composition of deep green tiles and stone finishes. In contrast, the powder room glows beneath molten light, its walls lined in red mosaic tiles inspired by the “heat hidden beneath the earth’s surface”, Yvette explains.
It is a home defined by its setting, with the colours and textures of Lake Rotoiti finding their way indoors in subtle and unexpected ways. From the cool stillness of water and native bush to the volcanic forces that lie beneath them, every material gesture draws on the landscape beyond.
The result is a retreat that feels at once deeply connected to place yet luxurious, designed not simply for holidays but for a lifetime shaped by the rhythms of the lake.
