Looking for somewhere safe to park your Silicon Valley dollars before the hoi polloi take up pitchforks against you? Moving to New Zealand to avoid social unrest? You’re not alone. But where to live and carve out a new life? Hopefully somewhere like this aggressively sunlit beach house.
Basically it isn’t so much a residence as it is a volumetrically substantial picture frame for the surrounding environment: specifically, Rangitoto Island and Takapuna beaches, in Auckland. Visitors are greeted by a slat-board cedar fence that segues into the home’s interior walls; most of the exterior walls consist of floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, it’s bright-bright-bright thanks to all that glass — there’s even a skylight in the entry way, guaranteeing maximum sun.
It’s also decidedly “warm” in all the right ways, a result of the client’s own design request, which comes about through use of cedar, white paint and windows everywhere.
All in all, it’s a singular place to wait out the apocalypse — just ask Peter Thiel, who took on New Zealand citizenship in 2011 and has since become the poster child for Silicon Valley types seeking a leafy kiwi refuge — a hedge against the Game of Thrones-style social upheaval threatening Europe and the U.S. Maybe the best way to prep for doomsday isn’t, actually, to build a bunker in the backyard — but to invest in a house like this on an island far, far away from the doom.
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