IN-HABIT

Abstract

Whilst perceptions of the ‘ideal habitat’ vary, the curation of the architectural interface govern the human experience of our urban environments. This thesis explores the formation of an urban habitat through intervention of the local urban morphology and architectural density, within the core urban realms of Auckland City. These areas have banished all feasible means of sustainable urban inhabitation in both their social and economic constructs. With the population progressively growing in Auckland City it is important to develop successful typologies of higher density architectural forms that provide a programme for residential living within the central city zone. This importance to establish a positive residential framework within Auckland Central has become highly apparent, as rapid increases in the population are contributing to housing unaffordability and availability. This thesis draws its intervention through multiple urban ideologies to present a contextualised approach to urban living, that stimulates the projection of what inner city living could look like for today’s urbanite, to address issues of density and urban morphology observed within the contextual urban condition. This thesis explores a means of mediation to assist in the formation of a local framework, to formulate an ideal living condition with the city’s high density spaces. The project imagines an urban intervention in a residential sense to bind the ambition and architectural form, to express an ideal of urban living to challenge the local expectations of how a residential dwelling should manifest. In doing so, it seeks to catalyse a transition to a higher number of people interfacing with facets of the urban framework that lack the interface to curate and form engagement in a human sense.