Wellington, New Zealand-based architect Gerard Dombroski creates a beautifully compelling example of found object architecture with his Picolo Cabin. An idiosyncratic piece of design, the building takes its inspiration from a skate ramp Dombroski had previously been working on for a friend. The cabin is sited in a glorious spot beneath the steady tilting canopy of a kanuka tree and took its shell and footprint from an abandoned zipline platform, the frame offering a starting footprint and a solid mount on the slope that was once the jumping off point for aerial runway adventures.
The early decision to focus the design on the concept of a ‘room for views’ lead Dombroski to develop two main sightlines for the cabin. The first was straight up through a rather opulent – given the project and its materials – skylight at the top of the ramp-like structure, and the second was out across the tree canopies down over the hill. The project was commissioned by Driving Creek Railway and Pottery, for whom Dombroski took on a month-long residency with the brief to build ‘something’. The only stipulations were that whatever this ‘something’ was, it must be made from found materials around the site – with the financial effects of Covid meaning there was no budget. That ‘something’ eventually became the Picolo Cabin.
Photography © Samuel Hartnett