While perceptions of the ‘ideal habitat’ vary, the curation of the architectural interface governs the human experience of our urban environments. This thesis explores the formation of an urban habitat through the intervention of the local urban morphology and architectural density within the core urban realms of Auckland City. These areas have banished all feasible means of sustainable urban inhabitation in both their social and economic constructs.
With a progressively growing population in Auckland City, it is essential to develop successful typologies of higher density architectural forms that provide a programme for residential living within the central city zone. The importance of establishing a positive residential framework has become highly apparent with rapid population increases contributing to unaffordable and unavailable housing.
This thesis draws its intervention through multiple urban ideologies to present a contextualised approach to urban living. This approach stimulates the projection of what inner-city living could look like for today’s urbanite, addressing issues of density and urban morphology observed within the contextual urban condition.
A means of mediation is explored in this thesis to assist in the formation of a local framework, to formulate ideal living conditions within the city’s high-density spaces.
The project imagines an urban intervention in a residential sense to bind the ambition and architectural form, expressing an ideal of urban living to challenge local expectations of how a residential dwelling should manifest. In doing so, it seeks to catalyse a transition to a higher number of people interfacing with facets of the urban framework that are unable to curate and form engagement in a human sense.
How can architecture address inherent issues within urban morphology to stimulate a city’s transition towards a highly habitable urban space and assist in the curation of an inner-city community?
