HIGHER HOPES FOR DENSER LIVING
One of our Architectural Graduates, Tayla, has recently achieved her Masters of Architecture degree at Victoria University of Wellington, and we are so very proud! We thought this would be a great chance to share her fifth-year thesis which explored the current restrictions in existing medium-density housing in New Zealand. Her thesis “Higher Hopes for Denser Living” challenges how we traditionally see suburban architecture and how it’s not necessarily adapted to future housing needs.
“As the need for greater housing density increases, improving the quality of design in medium-density housing will raise the appeal to New Zealanders. There is a growing agreement that medium-density housing developments are part of the answer to New Zealand’s housing supply issues. However, there is less agreement on what constitutes good quality medium-density housing and how this may assist in enhancing livability for those who live in these areas.”
SITE
Tayla chose a site in Kilbirnie, just outside of the Wellington city centre, to investigate her findings and design a residential development.
A key driver in her thesis was the Kilbirnie Revitalisation Plan that ensures residential growth will be organised in a way that benefits the entire community.
“The aim was to enhance livability in medium-density housing in Kilbirnie, Wellington”
Massing Study
DWELLINGS
As part of the design process, Tayla chose a target market and started to conceptualise what each house would look like. Five conceptual designs were explored to provide choice for different demographic groups and family sizes.
Key ideas and characteristics that drove her architectural investigation included privacy and noise barriers, character and context, creative storage and space solutions, green spaces and materiality.
“The main architectural drive was to provide a series of attached and detached homes that had their own identity.”
House Type One - Exploded View
Masterplan
Tayla developed and refined her five house types as part of a masterplan study. These dwellings were arranged on site after a series of layout investigations. Part of this refinement included staggering house types which helped the development fit into its suburban surroundings.
“As part of the developed design and master planning process, each dwelling has been adapted and modified to respond to conditions on site.”
Tayla ended up designing 27 dwellings to house a total of over 50 people.
All House Types
Including a common space for the development was essential in the masterplan design because it provides the dwellers with extra entertaining opportunities. Tayla positioned the common space in the middle of the development to create a privacy barrier between houses and to encourage communal living.
Tayla’s research aimed to understand the concept of how livability can be understood from an architectural perspective in medium-density housing. It demonstrated a qualitative approach to how characteristics and strategies can be applied in architecture to enhance the way people live, specifically in densely populated areas.
