The Infill Neighbourhood

Wellington is set to expand tremendously in the next thirty years with an expected rise in population by up to 80,000 people. This creates the ongoing problem of how to house these people and where. The most common answer to this problem is to build up or to build large apartment complexes. However, in a city known for its eclectic personality and urban landscape this is not the most desirable option. Wellingtonians want expansion to happen in the current urban areas and for it to be ‘compact, vibrant, inclusive and greener’. (Wellington City Council, 2020) Infill housing, defined by the Wellington city council, is the process of building new dwellings within an existing suburb of older houses. In other words, infill housing is the addition of new housing interventions, whichever form they take, into established neighbourhoods. Infill housing can take on many forms, and this has led to apprehension in many New Zealand neighbourhoods. There are many implications to infill housing which have a large impact on the social, cultural, and contextual aspects on a neighbourhood, otherwise referred as the character or sense of place.

Wellington is looking for a new solution to its inevitable housing shortage and perhaps new building interventions to solve this problem. The investigation and application of this model in a New Zealand context is set out to create areas of higher density different to typical approaches and which improve urban amenity while simultaneously improving housing quality.

An investigation is to be carried out to determine how defining and adapting what infill housing is can have a positive impact within the New Zealand context, in particular Wellington. Through intensive research and adaptation to a Wellington site a successful intervention would produce new, interesting infill housing that would integrate well and could be used and adapted to other cities in New Zealand and successfully integrate itself within the character of established neighbourhoods.