Abstract:
This thesis examines how architectural designs, real estate processes and media language combine to produce narratives that define the private house primarily as a commodity. This stems from an examination of the language used to express the Auckland ‘housing crisis’, that came to a head in 2017 when the city’s median house price reached ten times the city’s median household income. Whether for use as a residence or as a means of income generation, the underlying narrative in the public discussion on housing is that the primary function of a domestic property is wealth accumulation, rather than shelter, security, privacy, agency, or other important aspects of dwelling and home ownership. Many of these issues are exemplified at McLennan, a new suburban housing development in Takanini, on Auckland’s southern rural boundary. Marketed to firsthome buyers as a way of starting their journey on the ‘property ladder’, at McLennan the pressure of high land prices has seen the New Zealand ideal detached house on a plot of land scaled down to an ‘affordable’ size. Garages, master-bedrooms, en-suites and gardens are not disposed with, instead all facets of the suburban ‘ranch style’ home are shrunk to a minimum. In the context of extreme unaffordability, this thesis questions whether this is appropriate or desirable, and an alternative solution is imagined for a block at McLennan. The speculative design investigates the possibilities that emerge when ‘the house’ is not assumed as a singular, detached object to house a nuclear family. Drawing on analysis of higher density precedent projects, and accepting the situation where the house is indeed an asset, housing in this project is reconceived as a more flexible infrastructure that seeks and supports more variable familial structures, more contemporary relationships between home and work, and the provision of ‘third spaces’ that encompass ideas of a sharing economy, from the ability to sublet a room through Airbnb, to the sharing of laundries and gardening tools. The project is designed around the belief that if a domestic property is going to cost ten times the average median income, its design must ensure flexible inhabitation and support alternative ways of increasing equity.