Independent commissioners are still deliberating over whether or not to approve the construction of a 2000sqm+ house between Damper Bay and Wānaka. 

Applicant Nature Preservation Trust has sought consent to demolish a 650m2 home and replace it with one more than three times as big, at 2,008m2, plus another 449.95m2 for a garage and storage shed. 

It is one of two proposed palatial properties being considered in the vicinity, with the other being the US billionaire’s Peter Thiel’s high-profile proposal for a luxury lodge. 

While architects for Thiel’s luxury lodge plan to nestle his buildings into the hillside, Sorted Architecture have instead designed a property which will burrow downwards, with the use of “cave-like portals”.

More than 66 percent of the gargantuan home would be built below ground levels, with windows and doors to the underground portion “subtly located in the steep hillside below the above ground part of the residential unit” according to application documents.

This would still leave 600-or-so sqm of the property visible above ground, roughly the same size as the house already on the site. 

According to application documents, Nature Preservation Trust Ltd purchased the 7.66ha site off Wānaka-Mt Aspiring Road in 2016 with the overall goal of “enhancing the lakeside flora and fauna for existing and future generations”.

Four thousand native plants have already been planted on the site, which is located near the western shoreline of Roy’s Bay, and extensive pest eradication has also been carried out. There are plans for additional native planting on the property, as well as around the home.

After an approval of the proposed project from 2018 was overturned, a new application was submitted in 2021.

Commissioners Robert Nixon and Jane Sinclair heard the application in May, and no decision has been made yet. 

The owner of the property has not been made public.

IMAGES: QLDC