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Alki Design

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Alki Design, Architectural Designer, 38 Bernard Road, Albert Town.

Alki is a boutique architecture and design studio creating soulful, high-performance spaces that connect us — to our environment, to each other, and to our future.

18/06/2026

Project: The Yakisugi Cabin
Location: Wanaka
Status: Complete

The Yakisugi Cabin explores how architecture might work more like an ecosystem.

StrawSIPs combine structure, insulation, and carbon sequestration within a single modular system. Clay plaster regulates humidity and adds thermal mass. Tadelakt forms a waterproof bathroom enclosure without synthetic finishes.

Offcuts became decking, shelving, mulch, and firewood for the outdoor bath. Rainwater is directed into ground soak pits. Greywater irrigates fruit trees, vegetables, and wildflowers.

Even the separate storage shed — built from leftover materials — supports seasonal living patterns, storing bikes, surfboards, climbing gear, onions, garlic, and preserved food through winter.

The project is not driven by perfection, but by curiosity.
An ongoing attempt to design with nature rather than against it.

A reminder that good architecture is not only about how something looks — but how it lives, adapts, ages, and gives back over time.

Photographed by

15/06/2026

Project: The Ryokan
Location: Franz Josef
Status: Under Construction
Certification: 10 Star Homestar Design Rating

Detail development for the Ryokan.

This drawing explores the junction between the Thermadura Chalet door system, the exposed cypress rafter structure, and the perimeter deck assembly.

The doors are triple glazed, airtight, and constructed from American oak internally, with reclaimed Australian spotted gum to the exterior — ebonised to sit quietly alongside the Yakisugi cypress cladding.

Deep overhangs formed by the exposed heavy timber rafters help protect the building envelope from Franz Josef’s intense wind-driven rain, while also carefully controlling summer solar gain and supporting the covered wrap-around deck.

The deck structure is cantilevered from the primary building frame, allowing the perimeter to lightly touch the ground using ishibadate principles — with stone separating untreated timber posts from direct ground contact.

Rather than relying on conventional suspended gutters throughout, rainwater is guided into a perimeter rain garden surrounding the home, helping slow and return water back into the landscape. Custom 150x150 EA aluminium gutters are integrated discreetly along the rear of the building to collect and store rainwater for reuse.

One small detail within a much larger conversation between climate, structure, material, and place.

11/06/2026

Project: The Yakisugi Cabin
Location: Wanaka
Status: Complete

We designed the interiors around rituals, not rooms.

Morning light moving across clay plaster walls.
Cooking slowly.
Opening joinery systems that shift the space between sleeping and living throughout the day.

Kinetic furniture became part of the architecture itself — allowing the small footprint to remain flexible, calm, and deeply functional.

Every object was considered before the home was built. Every bowl, backpack, climbing rope, tool, and sweater needed a place to belong.

The material palette remains intentionally restrained — timber, clay, lime, straw, stone, and reclaimed elements allowed to age naturally over time.

Grounded in a wabi-sabi philosophy, the cabin embraces imperfection, repair, experimentation, and the quiet beauty of things made carefully by hand.

Photographed by

07/06/2026

Project: The Ryokan
Location: Franz Josef
Status: Under Construction
Certification: 10 Star Homestar Design Rating

The shell of the Ryokan arrived quickly.

These film photographs — taken on Grandad’s old Pentax during construction — capture the installation of the modular StrawSIP panels in Franz Josef, one of the wettest environments in Aotearoa.

The exterior wall panels were installed in just two days.

StrawSIPs are a prefabricated wall system made from compressed straw insulation held within untreated cypress framing — creating a high-performance wall assembly using 100% natural materials and no synthetic insulation products.

The system achieves approximately R-6 insulation performance while remaining breathable and vapour permeable.

Externally, the panels are wrapped with a German woodfibre insulation board which helps protect the assembly while still allowing moisture to move safely through the wall. A ventilated cavity sits beyond this layer, allowing the system to dry naturally over time.

The result is a warm, dry, durable building envelope designed for longevity — particularly important in climates like the West Coast, where buildings need to manage moisture carefully for decades to come.

Film photographs by Charlotte
Captured on a 1964 Pentax Spotmatic

04/06/2026

Project: House on the Prairie
Location: Wānaka
Status: Preliminary Design

The planning of this home is centred around environmental response, daily function, and long-term adaptability.

A continuous northern living edge captures sunlight and panoramic views, while service spaces and heavier earth walls form protective buffers to the south and west. The home is organised around a central courtyard and natural pool, allowing landscape, light, and water to remain embedded within everyday circulation and family life.

The roof form is intentionally simple — a low continuous structure wrapping the courtyard and extending outward to create shelter, reduce overheating, and support passive solar performance. Deep overhangs regulate seasonal sun, while the roof geometry allows integration of north-facing solar arrays and rainwater collection systems.

A plan shaped as much by climate and performance as by architecture itself.

02/06/2026

Project: House on the Prairie
Location: Wānaka
Status: Preliminary Design

Set within an exposed rural landscape overlooking the Southern Alps, this project explores how a family home might create shelter, thermal comfort, and intimacy without disconnecting from the scale of the land around it.

The architecture is organised around a protected courtyard and natural pool, using insulated rammed earth walls and charred timber screening to mediate wind, sun, privacy, and seasonal change. Long roof overhangs, operable shutters, and restrained glazing work together to control solar gain while maintaining connection to light, meadow, and distant views.

The material palette is grounded and durable. SIREWALL rammed earth provides thermal mass and permanence, while Yakisugi cladding introduces shadow, texture, and low-maintenance resilience against Wānaka’s harsh UV conditions. Wild meadow planting and recessed pool fencing soften the transition between architecture and prairie beyond.

A home shaped by climate, ritual, and restraint — balancing protection and openness within a vast alpine landscape.

27/05/2026

Project: The Yakisugi Cabin
Location: Wanaka
Status: Complete

The Yakisugi Cabin was never really about building a “small house”.
It was about testing another way of living.

A slower way.
A more resourceful way.
A way of building that embraces limitation as part of the creative process rather than something to fight against.

Much of the home was constructed from materials already around us. Macrocarpa trees from Charlotte’s family sheep farm — milled decades earlier and forgotten in an old shed — became the cladding, joinery, linings, furniture, and light fixtures.

Every surface was shaped by hand.
Planed, glued, sanded, assembled, dismantled, and reworked again.

The cabin became an ongoing experiment in craftsmanship, performance, and playful problem solving — where architecture and making blurred together.

The project was never really about perfection.

It was about curiosity, experimentation, and learning through making.

Photographed by

26/05/2026

Project: Lake Hayes Retreat
Location: Arrowtown
Status: Works in Progress

Courtyards and alleys seem lost in modern architecture.

There is something beautiful about the sanctuary, veiled from the chaos of bustling streets, finding respite from the demands of daily life.

20/05/2026

Project: Lake Hayes Retreat
Location: Arrowtown
Status: Works in Progress

From the hillside, the residence commands sweeping views of Coronet Peak and Lake Hayes. The precast concrete base roots the structure to the land, while the lofted metal screen mitigates the New Zealand sun, casting a warm glow from within as evening falls.

Address

38 Bernard Road
Albert Town
9305

Opening Hours

Monday	8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday	8:30am - 5pm
Thursday	8:30am - 5pm
Friday	8:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+64272611588

Website

http://www.alkidesign.co.nz/

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