Some of the best creative minds working in the building industry speak to Leanne Moore about rewriting the way we live in New Zealand. These trail-blazing architects are designing multi-unit housing that’s aesthetically pleasing, award-winning and a great space to live in.
Picture a sun-drenched garden surrounded by apartments
Kiwi architect Thom Gill introduced the concept, with his Danish-born architect wife Helle Westergaard, when they moved from Copenhagen to Auckland in 2012 and cofounded Studio Nord. Along with David Welch and Georgianne Griffiths, they established Cohaus, completed in 2021. Both couples now call it home, along with 50 others. Creating Cohaus taught them a lot about housing development in New Zealand, says Thom.
“It’s a risky business and although profit margins can sound high, the cost of building is also high and unpredictable,” he continues. “This means a lot of apartments are designed to be superficially attractive and ‘on trend’, to sell off-plan as quickly as possible. Real estate agents and valuers have a lot of influence on design, and they are not trained designers,” he adds.
“An advantage of being the architect and the developer is you can maintain a consistent design approach to everything, down to the placement of the last garden-hose tap. We call our approach ‘quality generic design’ and find that our residents respect and take pleasure in an environment where everything has, to some degree, been designed consciously,” he says.
“We believe simple well-proportioned buildings with a minimum of robust materials are both elegant and enduring.”
The beautiful, generous garden space in the middle of Cohaus takes many visitors by surprise.
“What we did differently here is exclude cars almost entirely, as they normally occupy a huge part of a site with parking and driveways. The space not taken up by cars is given to the garden.”
The Cohaus site was chosen for its ideal location – close to schools, shops, and transport routes.
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Advertise with NZME.“This was deliberate. It took two years to find the right site. The position and size is perfect. Most of our residents can do most of their daily activities by bicycle,” says Thom.
Cohaus presents an updated take on communal living that differs from the hippie communes of the 1960s and ’70s – where members lived together on a plot of land and pooled their income.
“Anyone who thinks we are hippies doesn’t know us,” says Thom.
The apartments and townhouses are each privately owned, and the shared spaces operate as part of the Cohaus’ body corporate.
“We have chosen to share more spaces for common activities than a normal body corporate because it makes sense to. We are a community rather than a commune,” he explains.
While the cohousing model is well known in Scandinavia, here it’s somewhat of a social experiment. In addition to the communal garden and meeting room, residents share a laundry, bike shed, guest bedroom and six cars, which are parked on vertical stackers in one corner of the property. Residents make a booking when they need to use a car or the guest bedroom.
Cohaus, which has won multiple architecture and design awards, is such a success that plans are underway for a second development in Grey Lynn.
“An amazing site came up for sale two blocks away on Stanmore Road and we went for it.”
Plans include a couple of three-storey walk-up buildings offering apartments in a range of sizes, from studio to three bedroom – 36 units in total.
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Advertise with NZME.“We are already oversubscribed, after emailing people on the Cohaus waiting list, and we don’t even have a Resource Consent yet,” says Thom.
“With the construction industry stuck in the recession, it is actually a great time to build, so we have hired our consultant team and are developing the project at full speed.”
North of Auckland, at Snells Beach, a quietly compelling coastal development has taken a top architecture title – the first time a multi-unit development has been awarded Home of the Year by Home magazine. Crosson Architects received this accolade last year for Boathouse Bay, described by the judges as an exemplary model of multi-unit design, embodying the quest for community living through a marriage of architecture, landscape and master-planning.
Architect Ken Crosson credits Boathouse Bay developer Mat Peters, of Avant, with driving the look and feel of the project.
“Mat is a visionary who had aspirations to create something unique and special, a community where a large number of people could enjoy this prime waterfront location.”
Thirty-three houses gently follow the contours of the land, replacing two residences and a boatshed that were originally on the site. Each home is modest in size but rich in spatial quality. The light and dark exterior materiality and repeated forms create a quiet rhythm along the coastline. The result is a housing development with visual cohesion that feels both intimate and timeless. The density allows for shared spaces to accommodate community gardens, barbecue areas and places for informal social connections.
“Knowing your neighbours has enormous mental and physical health benefits,” says Ken.
As well as outdoor spaces designed for neighbourly interactions, the carefully considered internal layouts are designed to open toward water views.
“The brief was essentially very simple: create a series of homes that formed the basis of a community, something that was beautiful and maximised the potential of the site, buildings that connected to the context, to nature and to neighbours,” says Ken.
Back in Auckland, the rhythmic roofline of a row of architect-designed homes has attracted attention for the beauty it brings to Hobsonville Point. Designed by Stevens Lawson Architects for Jalcon Homes, these award-winning houses are part of Sunderland 6, a medium-density housing development completed in 2017. Oriented to overlook a coastal path, the family-sized homes echo the profile of the hangars from the former airbase nearby.
This project is one of several that Stevens Lawson has designed for Jalcon: “Our long-standing collaboration with Jalcon Homes comes from a shared passion for design, and a desire to produce quality living environments,” says architect Gary Lawson, who launched Stevens Lawson 23 years ago with architect Nicholas Stevens. “Often with density, it is attention to siting, access to sun and outlooks, outdoor space and landscaping that makes a substantive difference to the outcome, along with thoughtful interior planning. We enjoy the challenge of producing quality solutions that people value,” he says.
In 2023, another collaboration between Stevens Lawson and Jalcon came onto the market – the 24-unit Ōwairaka Collection has their signature elevated design values. Deliberately targeted at the lower end of the market, it’s part of the KiwiBuild scheme. The apartments range in size from one to three bedrooms, with the smallest (one bedroom) selling from $550,000.
“We believe that good, thoughtful design should be accessible to all,” says Gary.
Carefully considered design is embedded in every aspect of the project: the interiors, the interconnection of each apartment, the landscaped gardens and the thoughtful communal spaces.
“Although these apartments were brought to market during a tricky economic time, the fact that they all sold is testament to Jalcon’s vision and belief that good design sells and is valued,” says Gary.
These apartments show that density can be low-cost, attractive, sustainable and community friendly. This exceptional multi-unit housing development won Stevens Lawson a local NZ Institute of Architects award last year. The architects were praised by the judges for redefining contemporary living with their innovative design and thoughtful execution.
The hope is that directional and award-winning designers and visionary developers will help move the needle toward more considered and creative housing that’s good for both people and the planet. It’s projects like these that will change the way we live, moving us away from the traditional Kiwi dream of a white picket fence and quarter-acre section toward empathetically designed apartments and townhouses. Density done well brings elevated design to the masses, improving the lives of the people who live there and the communities that grow from this new way of living.
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