A floating world

Titirangi’s Brake House features in architecture magazine Monument’s inaugural guide to Australasia’s seminal residential projects. Designed by Auckland architect Ron Sang, the Japanese-inspired house was built for world-famous NZ photojournalist Brian Brake in 1976. Monument: “Despite being raised in the air, the house seems to find a new ground; it nestles not into the hillside but into the dense foliage that fills the site. This quality of being at home in the air suggests the house’s genesis – it was designed by correspondence, drawings travelling back and forth between Sang in Auckland and Brake in Hong Kong by airmail.”