Tennent Brown

Tennent Brown is a people based practice that focuses on how buildings and environment affect the lives of those who are in them. With a passion for design that will improve the quality of life, work, and well-being of those the building served.

The winner of the Home of the Year award in 2006 was Hugh Tennant’s design of this all-new home with a remarkable affinity to its beautiful surrounds. “With Hugh’s design, the poetry of the site has been unlocked,” the owner says.

Tennent says about his design; “Architects can go hard-out to create a jaw-dropping form, and while I love that aspect of our roles, this home was very much about trying to respond to the site and serve the patterns of family life on it.”

Another of Tennent’s architectural triumphs was his 2003 Home of the Year finalist in Nelson, designed for a couple with a young child. Built on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the home was constructed from hefty timber beams and thick stone walls, with volumes closer to a lodge than a home. “The clients had two potential sites,” says Tennent now, “one to the north of the headland with big views to the open sea. The other site was tree-clad, contained, reflective – with deep views down to the water and the remnant headland of Split Apple Rock.” The resulting house could have been sited nowhere else.