The Family Friendly Home: A higher density adaptive reuse strategy for Wellington

This thesis will explore what makes a place family-friendly and, how likely families with children will consider moving into high-density residences in the Wellington Region. With an increasing population and housing demand, Wellington housing must increase in density. Furthermore, Wellington must seek to provide higher-density housing that responds to the needs of all its population including families, rather than only the narrow market that high-density housing has previously been marketed to.  High-density housing has often been marketed to single professionals, young couples, and empty nesters, neglecting the idea that families with children may also wish to live comfortably in the inner-city. Therefore, this thesis seeks to understand the needs of families to provide a living environment that responds to a family’s needs at all scales from the housing unit, building, and urban scale. It aims to do this through identifying and understanding issues identified previously by families living in high-density and exploring ways that they can be resolved in a design outcome. The thesis also reviews case studies of high-density residences to identify potential design solutions. This information was used to inform a questionnaire and the resulting survey identified specific needs and preferences in family-friendly higher-density housing for families. Using all of this, a site was chosen in the Wellington Region and developed through an iterative design process to provide a proposal for the issues identified in this thesis.  Initial research in Chapter one to Chapter five have been presented at the 52nd International Conference of the Architectural Science Association, in the paper titled ‘Regeneration of unused buildings within Wellington to attract family living, in response to the Wellington demographic’.