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Pepeha
Heretaunga ara-rau
Heretaunga haukū-nui
Heretaunga hāro-o-te-kāhu
Heretaunga takoto noa
Tihei Heretaunga!
Local proverb
Heretaunga (Hastings) of a myriad pathways (diversity)
Heretaunga of its life-giving waters (fertility)
Heretaunga whose true beauty can be seen through the hawk’s eyes
Heretaunga that lies here for before us to enjoy and care for
Heretaunga we salute!
Welcome to the Residential Intensification Design Guide, providing insights, resources and examples of good design practice for compact housing typologies that encourage two storey buildings.
Hastings city is surrounded by highly productive land which forms the backbone of our food producing economy. Fitting more houses into existing neighbourhoods and the city centre is key to meeting the high demand for housing, without expanding onto our rich and fertile land. This is otherwise known as residential intensification – a core goal of the Heretaunga Plains Urban Development Strategy 2017. To achieve this goal, Hastings District Council has developed this guide to offer a practical tool that provides ideas and solutions to common issues with development on smaller sites. The guide’s purpose is to:
The design guide is based on the principle of hauora (‘wellbeing’), ensuring that housing will meet the social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing of communities.
Building more houses in existing neighbourhoods to meet housing demand rather than rezoning rural areas is a key element of Hastings District Council’s Medium Density Strategy. The Residential Intensification Design Guide provides ideas and tips to help property developers, builders and architects achieve high quality, sustainable housing that also achieves this goal.
The guide sits alongside the Hastings District Plan and provides references to it, to help you design housing that meets the plan’s criteria. Please note, the District Plan overrides the guide where there is doubt as to a criteria.
Checklists, labelled images and examples are featured throughout the guide to make your development journey easy.
Our highly productive Heretaunga Plains surrounding Hastings city form the backbone of our food producing economy. Housing demand is constant and growing. Fitting more houses into existing neighbourhoods helps avoid housing spread onto our food producing land. It means we can meet demand while protecting our valuable land. This is otherwise known as residential intensification.
Six pillars of design
The guide is based on six design principles based on the concept of hauora (wellbeing) – and what is considered important for people living in or next to compact housing developments in Hastings. Te Aranga and Toi-Tū principles are interwoven into these six pillars, as pictured. These principles are featured throughout the guide in relation to each recommendation. See page six of the design guide for descriptions of these principles.
Key design elements
The guide focusses on the following design elements:
Residential intensification types
The following housing models are considered most appropriate for residential intensification:
Building houses and building community
Our vision is to have well designed and sustainable housing developments that through their design and layout, feel homely, build a sense of community, use land efficiently and protect our productive land.
We want to encourage housing providers to marry good design with a variety of residential intensification types to create high quality, high amenity housing options at a range of price points.
The Heretaunga Plains Urban Development Strategy promotes fitting more houses into existing neighbourhoods rather than rezoning rural land to meet housing demand. Jointly adopted by Hastings District, Hawke’s Bay Regional and Napier City councils, this Strategy recognises our Heretaunga Plains’ natural land and water resources are finite and under increasing pressure. We need to manage them well to ensure they are here for us today and in future.
Hastings District Council has adopted the Medium Density Strategy to achieve this.
If you can, it is worthwhile talking “with” the people who you are building for, not “for” the people from the beginning and throughout your project. This way you are more likely will meet the needs of the occupiers.
Adding certain features to your house will help make enable people with disabilities, or those with injuries or young children to move around freely and unimpeded. This means it will be more accessible to a wider range of users, and more marketable.
On top of that, giving thought to these features when designing or building a property leads to other flow-on benefits:
Features that improve the property’s accessibility include:
Outdoor (these may start from the car parking spaces or street access)
Indoor
Think ahead during design and construction
Considering these features at the start of design and development will help ensure the house can be adapted in future:
Standards New Zealand’s Design for Access and Mobility – Buildings and Associated Facilities provides excellent examples of how buildings can be made more accessible.
A wide range of options are available to choose from when selecting materials for the outside walls and roofs. When considering cladding, it’s important to give the frequency and ease of maintenance some thought. Certain cladding types are not suitable for certain building types; and different cladding types vary in their performance and maintenance requirements.
The Building Code requires cladding (for roof and walls) to last no less than 15 years, assuming people carry out the necessary maintenance.
More complex building shapes require more maintenance than simple building shapes. Complex junctions and shapes also increase the number of intervals in the roof or walls that need to be maintained.
We suggest designers try to avoid using complex shapes and junctions that could lead to moisture ingress.
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