Overview
Entrant:
RTA Studio
Category:
08. Residential Design Award for Single Family Dwelling
Photographed by:
Paul Brandon, Simon Devitt
Key team members:
RTA Studio
Dunning Thornton Engineers
Fisher & Paykel Home Solutions
APL
Red Stag TimberLab
Metalcraft Roofing
The Lever Room
ALT Group
The Living House explores how engineered timber can fundamentally reshape the way homes are designed, manufactured and experienced.
Conceived as both an architectural prototype and a scalable housing product, the project demonstrates how mass timber can deliver high-quality residential architecture that is affordable, rapidly constructed, and climate positive.
The design brief was to create a compact three-bedroom home that could be manufactured off-site, transported efficiently, and assembled by a small team with minimal specialised labour. Timber was selected as the primary material not only for its carbon sequestration properties but also for its structural efficiency, precision manufacturing capability, and ability to create warm, human-centred spaces.
The resulting house is an 85m² gable-roofed dwelling formed from a kit of 36 cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. These panels perform simultaneously as structure, interior finish, and spatial organiser. Walls, floors, ceilings and even pile foundations are expressed as solid timber elements, allowing the structure of the house to remain legible and tactile to occupants. Rather than concealing the structural system behind layers of linings and finishes, the CLT surfaces remain exposed, reinforcing the idea of timber as the defining architectural language of the home.
The clarity of the structural system enables the architecture to be both simple and expressive. The gabled form is archetypal, referencing the familiar silhouette of the New Zealand house while being reinterpreted through precision-engineered timber construction. Internally, the exposed timber structure creates a calm and cohesive interior environment. The natural grain, warmth and scent of the timber surfaces contribute to a strong sense of wellbeing and reinforce the emotional qualities associated with the idea of “home”.
From an engineering and construction perspective, the project rethinks the traditional labour-intensive timber framing model common in New Zealand housing. Each CLT panel is digitally fabricated using CNC technology and delivered to site as part of a flatpack system transported on a single truck. The house can be assembled in approximately six weeks by two to three people, dramatically reducing construction time and waste. The Rotorua prototype generated only one tonne of construction waste compared with the national average of approximately four tonnes.
Timber’s structural performance also supports the building’s environmental goals. The CLT structure stores approximately 37 tonnes of biogenic carbon, contributing to the project’s independently verified whole-of-life carbon result of –140 kgCO₂e/m². Combined with on-site solar generation and all-electric systems, the house produces more energy than it consumes over its lifetime.
The Living House demonstrates how timber can be both the structural backbone and the architectural soul of a home. Through clarity of material expression, precision manufacturing and a focus on human experience, timber is used not only to build the house but to define the qualities that make it feel like home.