The Tara Iti golf links and its clubhouse are rooted in the existing land; both have a common philosophy of working with what the land gives us.
The dunescape presented an opportunity for the strands of golf, landscape and architecture to be organically interwoven.
The clubhouse applies a minimal touch in gently reshaping the land form so that golf links and buildings seem to have always belonged here, at the heart of the Tara iti. It is a modest, warm building that provides a comforting, natural enclosure from the elements, while at the same time opening up and flowing out to the fairways, the 18th green and the seascape beyond.
For many visitors to Tara iti, the clubhouse will be their first encounter with a building on this special land. Emerging from the pines and rounding the last bend in the road, the building appears ahead, sitting low along a small ridgeline.
Leaving the car and walking obliquely up a low ridge, pavers bring the visitor through low planting, the distant rumble of surf and a burble of conversation are snatched from beyond the wall and a courtyard admitting entry to the intimately scaled club beyond.
The building is split into two gabled forms to reduce its bulk. The forms are connected by a solid wall plastered with sand from the site and emerging from the dunes to shelter a covered outdoor terrace on the seaward side.
Photographer Patrick Reynolds
