Hewn from Red Rock | Borrmeister Architects | ArchiPro

A cliff-edge build with extremely difficult access meant that carving out a home on this Scarborough Hill site was an exciting challenge for Borrmeister Architects. The combination of a difficult cliff-edge site and extremely challenging logistical issues meant that Red Rock House, on Scarborough Hill in Canterbury, was an exercise in tenacity for both client and architect. The small 400m2 site (of which a third is a right-of-way access) is found on the cliff face on a private accessway road, which is hewn from red volcanic rock and teeters above the coastline. If the location wasn’t already challenging enough for transporting materials to site, the road closures (caused by damage resulting from the Canterbury earthquakes) forced a narrowing of the already tight accessway. “That made the project very, very difficult, because we couldn’t take any large loads up to the site, so they had to be carried in with small trucks, vans, or trailers,” says Borrmeister Architects’ Wulf Borrmeister.