August Abstracts

Irawan Chandra Arief
Onehunga waterfront Project 
Abstract 
This project is about how people can have access to the waterfront. In the presence of two existing projects, Taumanu reserve and Onehunga port leave space between those two projects. providing an opportunity to create a space that may be integrated with each other. And the space for the community enjoys the potential of the waterfront
Another uniqueness of this site, Onehunga. Is a wealth of history and potential development for the city of Auckland in the future. A long time ago, Onehunga is a canoe ship crossing from Manukau inlet to Tamaki and even Coromandel. Meanwhile, the east-west link connection plan and Onehunga waterfront development will be an option for future development.
Researchers from literature studies, history, and articles from various newspapers on related topics serve as a reference for further research. Investigation of various designs is done, which then analyzed what the potential and obstacles. 
From various designs then came a better design potential, based on some workshops that have been passed, supervise, and input from related parties. A fish market can be an option for Onehunga and surrounding communities in the future.

Jie Zhang
The Bioregional Park : Commemorating the visit of Captain Cook
Not up until recently, the majority of people have begun to be concerned about the impact of human activities on the environment. As an increasing amount of people flood into towns and suburbs and more and more people are leaving the city, restoration, preservation and enhancement of biodiversity in towns and suburbs areas have become important.  This research is to develop landscape architectural methodology that applies bioregional concepts in concepts. The Mercury Bay is the place to test this new method. The research is expected to be used in the Mercury Bay test to apply this method to other projects. The aims are that to protect the ecosystem of the restoration of habitat patches, and to form a new cultural display window and to build a human activity network. This project’s other aim is to celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's first voyage (1769) to New Zealand.
Keywords: Biodiversity concepts, bioregional park, improve the environment, habitat patches, Bioregional Approach.

Teng Sun
Sponge City
Abstract
Under the expansion urbanization and climate change, many cities are suffering flood disaster nowadays. The conception of sponge city has shown up in recent years, it aims to build the whole city on a sponge to keep absorbing rainwater to slow or even stop the flood. To resolving flooding problems, this research focus on how to retain flood through sponge city as a landscape architecture design to reduce urban damage. Base on the temperate marine climate and irregular terrain in Auckland, I’m going to design a sponge city project in New Lynn area which is analyzed by GeoMaps data. Through the data collected, it is easy to find the places where have current flood issues or potential problems, then use landscape technique to design park, wetland, ponds to absorb flood in different water branch. There are number of cases around the world, which aims use flood and terrain to redesign and create different functions and landscape. This research includes the data integration solutions in Auckland, and show the evaluated effects.

Meng Zhang
Low-impact, climate-resilience urban design: renew inner city’s harbour 
Abstract
The challenges of managing stormwater run-off, which partly caused by climate change, have always been receiving highly attentions from all around world. However, due to stormwater been discharged into the harbours, which undoubtedly not only causes seawater contamination, also increased risk of people’s illness and intensify marine species’ loss. In this stage, it is most important to purify the rain flow before it run into sea.
My personal research will explore how to develop a design project which mainly focus on effectively keeping catchment water being clearer in order to prevent harbour environment. At first, I attempt to entirely analyse what design approaches, based on the framework of low impact urban design, also climate-resilience theory, may act on both mitigating catchment contamination and controlling over-flooding. Then, to consult with the previous project, I intend to choose a several coastal cities which also suffer from similar stormwater issues, and find what design approaches they used and whether they can effectively work. Finally, my expectation of this research is to address the Cox Creek catchment’s pollution to maintain and return Cox’s Bay being animated and recreational.

Guanghui Jiang
The Urban Regeneration of CBD Periphery Zones-The Study of the Strand Station Area in Auckland
Abstract
The land is rare in city centers, and new urban areas should be exploited or running down areas should be regenerated in the trend of big cities’ urban expansion in the world. CBD Periphery Zones (CPZ)are of high value. The functions in CPZ are worthy of being upgraded to cater to the need of city centers. High-quality public spaces in city centers can be extended to /across CPZ, which are easy to connect adjacent suburb town centers together. Heavy traffic infrastructure and transit nodes such as motorway, railway stations are usually located in CPZ. The introduction of High-Speed Trains in many modern cities recently is more likely to trigger an ambitious urban regeneration. Cities’ boundaries sometimes are restricted by industry areas. The regeneration of CPZ can contribute to removing the industrial functions and promote CBD’s urban development with more offices (Canary Wharf， London; Rotterdam Zuidas), housings (Java island, Amsterdam), entertainment spaces 798 art park, Beijing), tourism attractions (Sydney Opera House).
The research by design aims to explore the possibility of the urban regeneration of CBD Periphery Zones in Auckland city which is facing some similar problems of urban development so that to provide potential scenarios for Auckland and other similar cities in the world. The Strand station area which is of various talents is the specific site in the east-north edge of Auckland city center. An urban design emphasizing high-quality public spaces and the sustainable urban landscape is to deliver a clear and ambitious human intervention. Case studies, design precedents and theoretical framework from the theories of other experts in landscape architecture/urbanism are implemented. Mapping, site survey, and analysis are the basic work to conclude a scientific design. The ambitious concept of involving a national high-speed train station, the junction of a new tunnel linking north shore, public space corridors connecting CBD with Parnell town center and Auckland ports which are supposed to move away, is also to be the catalyst of a bigger urban development in Auckland.  
The research is to address profound perspectives for Auckland, enlarging the CBD boundary, connecting the waterfront and the adjacent town centers in a local scale, linking the city center for commuters and other big cities such as Hamilton, Wellington etc. by the high-speed train in a regional and national scale. This research is also to help other big cities in other countries to make strategic plans for urban regeneration when crossing the boundary of city centers. 

Wenjin Zhan 
Child-friendly green space design: enhance the relationship between children and nature
Abstract
With the development of urbanization, the area of urban green space is gradually decreasing, and children have less and less access to nature. All aspects of child development benefit from interaction with nature and lack of contact with nature can lead to psychological and health problems for children. On the other hand, parks do not attract children to participate and gain their attention. Nowadays, more and more children lack the contact with the natural environment, which attracts more public's attention.
This research project focuses on improving children's interaction with nature. First of all, I will collect data that based on the theory of environmental education, pay attention to the relationship between children and public green space (such as parks), and analyze the status of children's health. Then, I'm going to talk to some kids and their parents in Auckland about their understanding of green space and their real needs and ideas. After that, I plan to find some successful cases of green space design involving children and find out what kind of methods they use, and how effective they are in the end. Finally, I expect children are invited to participate in designing a green space in Auckland that they really like and improve the environmental awareness of children.

Zahra Baradaran Khalkhali
Towards a Robust Design: Using Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Design Process in order to Reducing Renovation Costs
Abstract
The common architectural design procedures usually focus on the current needs of users. Any changes in residents or the current residents’ demands might affect the efficiency of design. Moreover the changes in people’s lifestyle encounter the buildings to different types of costly renovations. As each building in its life cycle could experience different kinds of renovation, it would be more sustainable to predict more desirable scenarios of future renovations and consider them in the initial design in order to have a cheaper renovation process in the future. In this research, a new design process is proposed to take into account the effects of possible future renovation scenarios in initial design. Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a new technology in AEC industry is used to make this process executable. The proposed design process will be implemented in designing a small-scale residential building in Auckland while a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) would be performed to see how much money the new process would save or add to the construction and renovation expenses.


Okan Can Bozat
How can architectural carbon foot-print lowered by using natural systems in communual use buildings?
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to discover the benefits of low energy buildings regarding to the natural systems. The increasing population of the world leds to the rising number of cars, buildings and all human needs that causes the necessity of energy resources. Those resources are facing with exhaustion due to the capacity of nature. According to huge growth in the building industry, whole energy needs are increasing and the carbon foot-print of the buildings are rising rapidly. The majority of the buildings around the world are based on artificial supplies for heating, ventilating, lighting and all other aspects to create a comfortzone inside.
However, with the expand of sustainable approach, architects have started to focus on designing environmental friendly buildings. Those buildings are designed to provide natural atmosphere inside the building with using natural systems and they have started to become common in the latest years. On the other hand, most of the low energy buildings are designed as houses for private use especially in rural areas. It is possible to see some examples of passive houses, zero-energy buildings in New Zealand but unfortunately, the majority of the buildings are not sufficient. In this propsal, the aim is to achieve a completely self sufficient communual use building within the urban area in Auckland.