At Aranui Road in Mt Wellington, Housing New Zealand Corporation owned an elevated site adjoining the southern motorway, occupied by a scattering of detached and semi-detached houses. The residents of these represent a wide cross section of family groups and sizes with differing accommodation needs, but with a lack of 'fit' in terms of suitable house type. The site was also under-utilised in terms of it's effective use of land area and amenity for the residents.

While forming an important part of the local neighbourhood and community, in physical terms the site didn't adequately address the public street side. Also internally, the physical site was divided in two by a private road to a local kindergarten. It was further challenged by its orientation, sharply sloping to the motorway with its accompanying noise issues and exposure to prevailing southerly winds.

An opportunity existed to re-focus development on site. We achieved this by working closely with Housing New Zealand our Total Design team evolved a sustainable solution for the site. By increasing the number of houses on site, designing a range of house types to suit existing and additional families and creating sufficient shared open space to provide a modest community park. This integrated urban-architecture-landscape-interior design solution has addressed Housing New Zealand's qualitative needs on every level, providing an outcome, which meets their social, environmental and economic benchmarks.

One important relationship has been that with the building contractor. With careful programming and integration within the whole project team, the site has been progressively handed back to Housing New Zealand in stages, enabling early re-occupation by the residents. Already the new housing cluster integrates well with the neighbourhood and has a sense of belonging.

For more information on this Chow:Hill project,
Email: maurice@chowhill.co.nz