Extract

Medium Density Housing (MDH) is one of the strategies to address problems within New Zealand’s housing situation, namely the shortage of affordable urban housing. Land shortage and/or increasing land cost, overall low productivity and high production cost in the construction sector have been identified among the main drivers of this situation. This paper addresses MDH from a perspective of dwelling design, by adapting typologies to specifically suit hillsides, which tend to be less expensive land types; further it focusses on options to increase construction productivity by way of pre-fabrication, and it explores concrete based construction systems for increased building performance and productivity within the NZ context. This is of particular relevance to the implementation of MDH as a denser typology of dwellings, which often entails the use of higher performing components. Generic hillside MDH typologies and a MDH case study design were developed for a Wellington site, by way of cross-referencing construction systems, performance requirements and hillside typologies. The case study design was further examined with options for site logistics. Trade-offs between productivity (small vs. large prefab panels) and complexity/cost of site logistics became obvious and led to a proposal for a multifunctional stay-in-place formwork system, which could increase performance and productivity in NZ housing construction.

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