The honeymoon is the quintessential period of romantic bliss; when star-crossed newlyweds wish to escape from the world for a week or two and lose themselves in each other’s eyes (or something like that). But in reality, many honeymoons are spent in noisy hotels on crowded beaches that charge you outrageously to rent chairs. The design team at the New Zealand-based firm Pattersons offers a bright alternative though, in the form of their secluded Seascape Retreat.
Set into a hill on a South Pacific cove of the Banks Peninsula, the small rental provides all a honeymooning couple needs in only three rooms.
Set into a hill on a South Pacific cove of the Banks Peninsula, the small rental provides all a honeymooning couple needs in only three rooms; a lobby, a bathroom and (most importantly) a bedroom. Built with local materials quarried near the site and featuring an earth-turfed roof, the retreat appears to lift up from the knoll like a sleepy giant opening its eye, with much of the space built into the hillside to further give one a sense of privacy. The home’s unique design is organized to provide you with views of both the bay as well as calm rocky spires, and features an interior appointed with a breathtaking array of furnishings, as well as a bustling fireplace whose geometry seems to mimic that of the enclosing structure. Despite its seclusion, the cottage maintains a level of self-reliance thanks to an integrate system for harvesting on-site water and treating wastewater, helping to limit any ties the house must have to the outside world. But most of all, the Seascape Retreat is a stunning little escape that offers couples what they want most; total solitude from everyone around them, with nothing but the lapping waters of the beach and your loved one to worry about.
