Concept Custom home builder · Wānaka, New Zealand · 2026
One house at a time, within an hour of the lake.
Recorded from the live site at rae-thorburn.vercel.app
An architect and a master builder who only build within an hour of the lake. The site walks you through one of their houses the way they would: slowly, room by room, in the last of the light.
Rae & Thorburn is a fictional builder in Central Otago: an architect and a master builder, one office, one workshop, one house at a time. Their clients are buying a decade of someone's attention, so the site could not look like a catalogue. The brief was a single long walk through the flagship house, and a quiet studio behind it that makes the first conversation feel easy to start.
Scroll drives a film of the Dingle Burn house: the site from the air, the roof plane, the glazing, the kitchen, the joinery, the bedroom, the terrace at dusk. Seven chapters, each titled in a light serif, each held long enough to read.
The contrast does the persuading: first the house, then the people who would build yours.
The portfolio is a horizontal index of six houses, each with its valley and year. It reads like a builder's ledger, because that is what it is.
Chapter 1 of 4
Rae & Thorburn is a concept: an architect and a master builder in Central Otago who build one house at a time, within an hour of the lake. Their clients are not buying a house. They are buying ten years of two people's attention, and the site had to earn that before anyone called.
Chapter 2 of 4
So the site opens on the walk: a film of the Dingle Burn house, scrubbed by your scroll, from the site in tussock to the roof plane, the glazing, the kitchen and the terrace at dusk. Seven chapters, each held long enough to imagine standing in it.
Chapter 3 of 4
When the film ends the page turns to paper, and the voice changes to four plain lines about the work. That contrast does the persuading: first the house, then the two people who would build yours.
Chapter 4 of 4
The work is an index of six houses, each with its valley and its year, followed by the process from the first walk to the handover. Nothing is staged. It reads like a builder's own notebook, because that is the feeling the brand runs on.
The palette and typefaces Rae & Thorburn ships with.
Fraunces and Hanken Grotesk
Most visitors meet Rae & Thorburn on a phone, so the phone layout was designed, not squeezed.
Tell me what you do and who it is for. You get a free first call and a clear quote.
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