Architecture design is change.
Many years ago, when I was younger and had a full head of hair, I went to Germany to visit some distant relatives on my OE.
They lived in a small town. The planners had ring fenced the towns development and so the houses at the outer ring were one storey and looked at farmland over their back fence. As you moved into the town centre the building heights increased and so too the density. At the very centre was shops, community facilities and transport hub all with offices and apartments above.
What I loved about this arrangement was the ring fence. If you wanted to go to the next small town or village you needed to pass through farmland driving on country roads. A drive through nature. If you wanted to go to the city you hoped onto the autobahn, their motorway with no speed limit, very fast, too fast for my VW Kombi.
This isn’t what we do in New Zealand. We have strip development, lining our roads and motorways with housing, its ugly, unrelenting, and you never leave suburbia.
Some of the motorways I have been on in America used narrow forest planting as a buffer between motorway and housing, the trees also helping with the carbon dioxide.
The City Rail Link is part of a belated attempt to mimic the German town. High density development around transport hubs and transport routes. I note several apartment buildings have gone up around Maungawhau station already.
Housing in New Zealand has progressed through a series of house types. First the standalone quarter-acre section home, followed by infill housing. Then terrace housing and now apartments. Infill houses were small compared with today’s house sizes. They occupied the land left over between the houses on the ridges and valleys. The ridges and valleys being the easiest place to build roads. Terrace housing for low-cost reasons, to lower the land cost per unit. Apartments for students and now downsizers.
While we can lament the passing of the quarter-acre house, who now has the time to garden and mow lawns every weekend. We are busy with sports, travel and coffee drinking.
On the upside we now have accommodation choice. Young people no longer need to rent an old, dark and uninsulated villa. Terrace houses provide you with your own front door and backyard. Older people or busy people can move to a new warm and low-maintenance apartment and have all the amenities at their doorstep or a train ride away.
Higher density in the right areas make the neighbourhood vibrant with people in the streets and shops and amenities to service them.
paul@leuschkekahn.co.nz | 021 894 895 | leuschkekahn.co.nz
