Behaviorology in Freemans Bay

Abstract

This thesis imagines a new strategy of intensification for the heritage residential inner-city suburb of Freemans Bay in Auckland through the lens of Architectural Behaviorology. The vision produced in this thesis tries to grasp the opportunity of the inner-city suburb’s potential for intense, vibrant and liveable urban intensification in light of the need to shift Auckland towards a compact city; and aims to establish a process of intensification that can be applicable to other residential suburbs where the existing is respected as a starting point for higher-intensity development. Challenging the current plan for preserving most of the area because of the heritage villas (Auckland Council, 2014a), the thesis instead suggests that Atelier Bow-Wow’s theory of Behaviorology suggests a way forward with design intensification through understanding the changing nature of the existing heritage villas’ architectural behaviours. Behaviorology and architectural behaviours is about a newer framework of understanding architecture in a constant ecological relationship with three other factors: other buildings, people’s everyday lives and the natural environment (Tsukamoto, 2010). What is implied by this understanding is that there is a need for architecture to change if these other factors also change; and can be evidenced by the transformations of the villa in Freemans Bay since their original form through such things as garage and roof additions. Re-thinking the existing mechanisms which have already transformed the villas from their authentic form, the aim is to establish a strategy in the design of houses which intensifies the current area without ignoring or destroying the existing notion of character; instead, character is taken as a concept that constantly evolves along with the changes to houses and the streetscape. Rather than the scrap-and-build of large areas for high-rise development through top-down methods of intensification, the thesis hopes instead to consider possibilities of smaller bottom-up intensification through modifications of existing houses, subdivision and the design of new houses based on existing behaviours as a conceptual starting point. These possibilities are considered through the exploration of existing behaviours, the many design studies and the five more detailed prototypes in hopes of achieving both newer intensities and enriched liveability in the inner-city.