Abstract:
The New Zealand (NZ) housing industry faces 5 key issues, housing shortage, affordable homes, quality, labour shortage and low productivity. The Auckland region is predominant. In order to solve some of these issues, this research explores effective methods. Prefabrication could be one of the ways out of the pressing needs of housing shortage, labour shortage, construction speed enhancement and affordability improvement. This design project is based on a case study called ReFab. ReFab is a project aiming to retrofit existing Auckland social housing stock by the means of prefabrication. The pilot project has chosen an existing social housing area for elderly people. Due to the nature of the project, it would not be providing a luxury design solution; instead, a cost effective, flexible, fast built architectural solution. By further comparative study on construction costs and building performance, a finely prefabricated winter garden skin is developed to improve performance not only for housing NZ elderly living blocks but for all cases of existing NZ housing stock and new buildings. The structure of this design thesis starts with a definition of the problem, a critical analysis of prefabrication, consideration of performance and then moves on to design and evaluation.