Anyone who tuned into this week’s Christchurch Conversations was treated to a raft of passionate reasonings for why cities do indeed need more apartments to thrive. See below for a link to the video recording.
Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making director Jessica Halliday set the scene by deploying her powers as an architectural historian to great effect, with visual proof of the somewhat hidden history of building and living in apartments within Ōtautahi. Examples cited by Dr Halliday were Victoria Mansions, the Dorset Street Flats, Cambridge Courts and St Mary’s Apartments.
UDF co-chair Ekin Sakin was the lead speaker on the night, followed by Tania Wong of Ockham Residential and then followed up by chairing a panel of Mark Darbyshire (Apartment resident and Body Corp Chair), Jane Rooney (Principal and Delivery Lead, Architectus) and Bradley Nicolson (Developer and managing landlord, Oxford Terrace Baptist Church Housing).
Ekin brought the perspective of someone who has lived in apartments throughout her life. She took the full house at the speaking venue at Tūranga on an absorbing mini-masterclass of optimal choices and options for apartment developments, raising societal questions along the way that go beyond just the domain of ‘experts’.
Ekin’s contribution to this important conversation pointed to a broad array of typologies and “criss-cross densities” – all oriented to the first premise for having cities, that is the enablement of maximum interactions in the minimum time and with the best use of space. She lauded the flexibility that opens up for ground and top floors of apartment buildings, and gave her top tip for enabling apartment sites to take their environment-claiming sweet spot to the next level: “Trees, trees, trees”.
Tania Young’s sophisticated showcasing of Ockham’s shape-shifting developments in Auckland equally won over the audience, with many questions being ‘phoned in’ to ask “How do we get Ockham to Ōtautahi?”
One of Tania’s opening points was a preference towards informing each development by a careful consideration of the history of chosen sites. Similarly to Ekin’s sweet spot, the height of apartments being most often settled on is medium-rise.
As per Te Pūtahi tradition, the evening was capped off perfectly by a poetry reading. Local poet Lee Fraser delivered two poems: Get Off The Grass and Adjacent Strangers.
Lee’s idea of apartments being the ‘punctuation’ for a city captured the evening to a tee.
Her poems added a touch of linguistically loquacious humour, beginning with adroitly-evoked vernacular suburban tropes, juxtaposed in quick order with the not-so-splendid isolation that those quarter-acre “petrol mowing” sections present compared to living in an apartment … with their ‘free stuff cupboards’, ‘wildcard neighbours’ and all.
A viewing and most probably repeat-viewing of this educational and energising event is highly recommended. It can be directly found on Youtube here, or for an overview of further Christchurch Conversations you can go to the Youtube playlist page hosted by Te Pūtahi.
A further write-up may follow!
