Auckland Council works with top architects to release a series of low-cost, good quality housing designs

Click here to view the designs and explore how to deliver good quality medium
density housing.

As Auckland’s population grows our suburbs are changing. Single homes are increasingly being redeveloped into terraced houses and apartment buildings, but going up and filling in is not always easy.
Careful design is required to ensure that new developments remain affordable, provide a good quality of life for residents, and create safe, green neighbourhoods.

To assist designers & developers in delivering better quality medium density housing, Auckland Council has worked with Context Architects to develop a series of example designs.

Each example design demonstrates how to deliver high housing yields, while also creating liveable homes and neighbourhoods. The examples range from six terrace homes to thirty-eight unit apartment blocks and are designed to fit the most common Auckland site sizes.

View the example designs, as well as a range of other useful design resources at www.aucklanddesignmanual.co.nz/example-designs

1 thought on “Auckland Council works with top architects to release a series of low-cost, good quality housing designs”

  1. Couple of observations:
    1. What is the problem with going up? a 4 story apartment building is low. Surely we should be looking at 6+ ?? Take for example a horizontal ‘stack of houses’ that we know as terraced houses. A site in Takapuna Auckland has just four dwellings on a 662 sqm site. At ground level the site is dominated by the building. the driveway and unusable side yards. Compare this to a a vertical stack of houses. At 4 stories with sub ground car park – same floor space but uses just 250 sqm at ground level – leaving some 400 sqm for planting and ground level communal areas, etc. Add another two levels, 6 houses, another two, 8 houses. But what about shading? Somewhat counter-intuitively shading is at par with the 3 story (8.5m) 4 terraced house (assuming a future built form of similar proportions). And dominance? Again, and somewhat counter-intuitively not much different as planting (tall trees are possible) screens the bulk and ‘future built form’ means no one building stands out. Do Urban Designers ever do detailed sun studies – not just for a single building but for an entire block? Or is ‘height’ always an enemy?
    2. Zoning an area for apartments in Auckland doesn’t mean that apartments will ever be built there soon. Why? Ground conditions! Getting foundations down for taller buildings on ‘messy’ ground is massively expensive. Far better to zone areas that have good ground for apartments. Has that be done in Auckland? Or has Council (or an Urban Designer recommended) ever blocked a terraced house going up on ground perfect for a mid-rise building? NEVER! Are the ground conditions under a site ever the sort of thing that Urban Designers ever think about?
    (Doing some research on NZ’s low productivity … What we don’t build, when we should be, is one of the reasons it’s low.)

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