Whenua-First Living Landscape-Led Development

<p><strong>This practice-led research critically explores the intersection of regenerative design and environmental justice in greenfield housing within the context of sprawling urban residential growth, and disjunction from the kinship of the landscape. Against these prevailing extractive modes of development the project investigates conditions for the inclusion of housing and human community alongside and with other lifeforms present within Tawera/ Springfield in the Selwyn District of Canterbury. By attending to the complex inter-relationality of species, materials, geologic histories and narratives that constitute the landscape, a hyper-localised design response, or design kaitiaki, is critically generated. Through design, justice and the right to thrive is taken up as a multi-species, spatial and eco-centric concern. At the root of this ambition is the question of whom does design serve? The research is undertaken across three primary phases: Hyper-local site study, Landscape systems’ response, and Sympoetic design. This research prompts a pre-emptive shift in how the lands of Aotearoa might be spatialised by non-extractive housing development with ecological sensitivity. The research finds ways to demonstrate pathways for regenerative design amongst ever-dwindling resources amid growing population.</strong></p>