Abstracts

Nguyen Thien Ngan
Vertical Village in the heart of Auckland CBD
This thesis project is an architectural response to the Auckland Central Business District (CBD)’s revitalization. Due to high migration net flows and blooming of business activities in Auckland CBD, the commercial and residential building projects rapidly appear to be essential in order not only to capture the development of business and economy but also to adapt to the population’s growth. At present, the Auckland transportation is undergoing a great redevelopment to have new City Rail Link (CRL) stations to support the future growth in Auckland. One of the key hubs is the Aotea station which is promising the busiest station for students, employees and residents who are working and living in CBD.

Auckland CBD is a prominent education and business area but where also lacks high density architecture. The apartment and office buildings are standing alone which is the main cause of the urban sprawl. The “shoebox” is mostly used to describe these apartments due to the lack of space and affordability for those who want to live and work proximately and centrally. It is maybe a time to think about the appropriate way of living and working to engage the community rather than focusing on the single use design or creating the individual space.

 The research is based on the urban development strategies to create a small community in a mixed-use building which offers people many opportunities to live sustainably, to work productively and to play enjoyably while still is able to grow with the urban development.

  The question for this project is:  What are the desirable characteristic of an architectural design that provides a more resilient and sustainable way of living and working in Auckland CBD towards the future growth?  This project will focus on the design of the building which is shaped by the impact of the movement circulation and flows from the station’s passenger. It will also determine the important functional strategies that are suitable and interactive with the Aotea station as well as the location’s features. The brief chosen is to design a mixed-use community that blends the residential, commercial use and other amenities. The purpose of the project is not only to encourage communication between neighbors and local people, strengthen the benefits of future business but also to connect Auckland residents with employment and opportunities."


Janki Sharma
Transitional space is the intermediate area acting as an in-between space. Traditionally spaces were defined as indoor or outdoor spaces. The presence of transitional space was not experienced. So this research will be focusing on these transitional spaces and the journey of spaces from one place to another.
This research will be an implementation of design by intertwining the publications and case studies that are related to the topic. It will also attempt to identify what defines a transitional space that enhances the pedestrian experience in urban environment. Also, inserting architectural intervention with multi-functional public usage that intensify the sense of transitional space and connects it with urban fabric.

Loukya Muthyala
RESORT PARK WITH A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
As a new immigrant to New Zealand, I have become interested in the lack of cultural landscape tourism opportunities in Auckland.
Not everyone arriving in Auckland has the resources to travel nationally to see the natural wonders of the New Zealand culture and natural landscape. I am interested in creating a locally based tourism experience in Auckland that reflects the core cultural attributes of New Zealand.
As the tourist and resident populations are constantly increasing in Auckland. Asians and other communities are expected to arrive Auckland in the next 20 years. The city is expanding and suburbs tend to become urban areas. Puketutu Island, which is located at Mangere is well suited to investigate my research model. Fortuitously there is a plan in place involving the collaboration of number of stakeholders to create a regional park which includes a cultural precinct and there is also an existing event venue. My proposition is that these three entities, the park, the cultural precinct and an expanded tourist venue have the potential to collaborate to mutual advantage. The Island is also located in close proximity to the airport and major arterial road networks. The island has unique natural species of plants as well as panoramic views of Ambury Park, Stonefields Reserve and Manukau Harbour. Although the island is in short distance from the Heart of the city, it feels far from the urban environment. So, I believe Puketutu Island is the appropriate place to develop my research model.
I will also investigate the Kiwi ideal of holiday resort and research models of cultural landscape tourism, relating these to the Auckland situation to come up with better outcomes for all stakeholders.

Lahari Iynala
Students are increasingly anxious to achieve specific results in K12 education, especially with the weight of University entrance and applications for professional post secondary schools that gear students toward choosing lifelong practices of professions. While many studies have focused on most suitable educational curricula to best prepare students for careers and future learning, there is still little attention given to the environments that actively shape learning and understanding. This research explores how spatial environments of K12 educational facilities may become more directly engaged in the curricula and pedagogy of K12 learners, and do d ii a way that support engagement with both discovery and invention within subjects. The goal of this project is to understand how the landscapes and built environment can be designed as an active learning environment that ultimately supports and promotes deeper understanding and love of learning, and relaxed and yet motivated learning capacity in students.

Kael
Reclamation Park
My research question is how to make coastal areas more accessible to public, especially that are severed by motorway. Actually, there are already many limitation for public to close the coastline, including rough condition of geography, natural limitation, have to cross private possessions and construction of motorway. My research will focus on the last topic. Many countries meet similar issues and some of them are solved but different methods fortunately. My research aims to find out some possible solutions for this issue and I chose Shoal Bay as my research site. In the site, the current coastal area is very limited and also severed by the Motorway. In my design, I want to use land reclamation technique and some other methods to make the coastal area more available and reconnect it to the community.

Jie Zhang
The Bioregional Park: an approach to protect the environment and make sustainable public space and commemorate the visit of Captain Cook
In today's society, people are not very concerned about the relationship between human actions and human impact on the environment. This phenomenon has led to a society which attitude consequently results in overconsumption of natural resources and environmental degradation. As more and more people live in cities restoration, preservation and enhancement of biodiversity in urban areas has become important. This paper will present a concept of bioregional ideal. Using this concept, it does will help to change people's ideas about human relationship to the environment and natural resources from the current condition.
This research will use a bioregional park design project to show how to improve the environment, protect the natural resources, connect people to nature and make a habitat for ecosystems of plants and animals.

Qian Wang
Developing the greenery: A proposal for Masters study through
investigating School Ground Greening in Auckland
Rationales for the recent (ten plus years) resurgence in interest in school gardens focus
on perceptions adults have about modern childhood and schooling, e.g. lacking in
physical activity, facing an obesity epidemic, battling inflexible educational systems,
raising concerns about children’s diminishing contact with nature and natural systems.
Research on school ground greening projects (which is a overarching term including
school gardens) has established benefits due to increasing children’s connections with
nature on a number of levels, such as developing earth guardianship responsibilities,
learning where food comes from, science and ecology learning, encouraging physical
exercise and imaginative play.
This project will investigate the claim that many school gardens are limited both in
their scope and children’s participation, especially in their planning and design.
Instead they are frequently designed and constructed in an ad hoc manner by
teachers and volunteers, missing the opportunity both to engage children in a process
of learning about design (co-design) and to create ecologically richer school grounds
that are creatively designed to encourage indoor-outdoor connections, sensibly
planned for maintenance and sensitively planned to increase biodiversity and
provide ecosystem services within communities.
Base-line data about numbers and range of school ground greening projects in the
Auckland area will be sought, as well as the involvement of landscape architects.
From this a methodology for encouraging greater collaboration between landscape
architects and school students in school ground greening projects will be developed,
with the aim of improving school grounds and student learning, as well as increasing
the educational contribution, stewardship responsibility and discipline awareness of
landscape architects.

Shayne Noronha
Rising Tides and the Future of New Zealand’s Coastal Communities
Climate change will have tremendous implications for the design of landscapes and urban areas before the close of the 21st Century. Current projections suggest that increasing temperatures will cause significant sea-level rise, and this will certainly change the lifestyle and shape of highly valued coastal development across the globe. However, present day mitigation techniques are still dominated by a process of engineering efficiency that tends to ignore social, environmental and economic values critical for the vitality and sustainability of cities. (Jabareen, 2012). New strategies can build on functional engineering solutions to add value through design for urban ecology and quality of life, and suggest an approach to coastal resilience that achieves mitigation outcomes appropriate to coastal surges, while retaining investment and engagement in the everyday life of our cities. Landscape architects are well situated to lead collaborative research at coastal edges and provide opportunities for resilient urban development.

Riyasp Bhandari
THE URBAN EDGE
AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT WATERFRONT

The human manipulation of landscapes and the environment has remained a prominent area of urban and environmental discourse over the past century. Contemporary urban waterfronts reflect and constitute changes in urban ecology, economic regulation, and societal issues under the influence of coastal cities (Bunce & Desfor, 2007). The urban sustainability framework articulates the relationship between humans and the environment and needs to remain at the heart of urban discourse. This project explores the positive and negative impacts on Auckland’s waterfront, further understanding the values of cultural shifts, trade, productivity, transportation, social cohesion and ecology in the urban realm. This project will comparatively critique, analyse and assess urban waterfronts, through a set of criteria drawn from literature relating to sustainable cities. The scope of Auckland’s waterfront can be re-imagined through design ingenuity to support a sustainability framework that aims to enrich further natural systems to enhancing human well-being (Wu, 2014).

Zara Jawadi
Urban Retrofitting
The global population is projected to rise to 9.6 billion by 2050, with upward of 70% expected to move into urban areas (Atiya, 2013). Economic geography further suggests that the pressure to expand and availability of cheap land at the urban fringe leads to urban sprawl (Taylor, 1996). Like many major urban centres, Auckland faces problems related to urban sprawl, such as acute traffic congestion leading to unsustainable land use. (Jamieson, 2007) Shifting attention from new land development to retrofitting existing marginal spaces within the urban limits holds tremendous potential to rethink Auckland’s urban development. With focus on the development of remnant spaces in Auckland city this project establishes a series of strategies to create a networked infrastructure to support ecosystem health, thriving social communities, and economic opportunities. Particular attention is given to transport corridors that intersect with major residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of the city. The public transport system is explored as a tool for directing the future growth of Auckland.

Andrea Murray
The Christchurch Residential Red Zone -A Memorial Landscape Honouring Displaced People
The Red Zone, known as the RRZ, feels like a very sad place.  Even a brief drive through the vacant land disturbs the viewer.  It has a dark cloud of loss hanging over it.  The viewer shakes their head; how can that vast space (1000 acres) be used in a way that is honest and meaningful to the people?  10,000 people lost their sense of place on the land (Turangawaewae- Place to Stand) after the earthquakes, in addition to 185 families losing a loved one. It was the ‘Land’ and its extraordinary power that caused the deaths and the displacement of so many.  Maybe it can be the ‘Land’ that helps the people of Christchurch heal and gain a sense of closure?   The Red Zone as a Memorial Landscape is not about making everyone forget about earthquakes and the pain of loss, in fact the opposite.  A Memorial Landscape should honour the disaster and all the displaced people who lost more than their homes, a Memorial Landscape to honour a sense of  place on the land,  Turangawaewae.
This loss of place on the land is a huge global problem, (as are earthquakes and tsunamis), the enormity of such problems can make us feel out of balance.  A Memorial Landscape in Christchurch should honour both disasters and displacement and aim to restore a response of balance to the visitor. Creating a Memorial Landscape should not try to make us forget, rather it should make us remember displaced people and that we are grateful to have a place on the land (Turangawaewae).

Sravani Khambhampati
Desokota City in Auckland NZ
 How can the urban cities help in developing the neighboring peri-urban area?
 How can we reduce the growing carbon footprint of new urban development (India) through preservation of existing groundwater, flora and fauna?
 How can we save the existing landscape in urban development and make use out of it for aesthetic pleasure?
 How do we inculcate landscape architecture into upcoming construction?
 How can a developer be persuaded to install low maintenance landscape?
 How can the provision of green space in Andhra Pradesh be based on ecological principles?
The new state is developing occurring like Malaysian Town and Singapore Town which are just copies of eastern development pneumatic urbanism and have nothing endogenous representing our environment, heritage and culture. Ultimately because of this they will be unsustainable.
My reason for choosing this particular field for research stems from having witnessed massive changes in the natural environment around my home. Being aware of the adverse results of damaging the natural landscape of a place with reckless abandon, I wish to make a contribution towards helping prevent said damage without causing a dent in the development of my country.
Which landscape architects/ architects have developed ideas and techniques the methodology to ensure an environmentally sustainable model for new urban development?
The path I propose to take for arriving at solutions to the above problem is to learn as much as I can about both contemporary methods of landscape architecture, and urban development. Based on research via extensive case-studies of contemporary landscape architecture (both sustainable and otherwise), I intend to contribute towards developing methods of sustainable landscape. The end result of my project would be to arrive at more sustainable alternatives to the traditional methods of landscape architecture, while not compromising on real estate value. Further, I wish to explore methods of landscape architecture which could be more affordable, while not compromising on aesthetics or sustainability

Vandita Ahlawat
Beyond Net Zero Neighborhoods:
How can the inherent pressures of urban sprawl be used as an opportunity to design communities as net-positive resources for our natural environments?
This research explores the impact of the expanding city through a lens of long-term urban resilience. Despite the apparent negativity associated with urban sprawl, case-studies show that net-zero neighborhoods are economically feasible, and can provide some ecological significance to community design. The critical problem of community development actually rests in the assumption that development is necessarily damaging to natural systems. From this, the designer’s role must then be to mitigate the level of expected damage. Yet, the pressures of development may offer opportunities to enhance our natural environments. Whereas projects that seek a net-zero energy communities are increasingly able to meet greenhouse gas and carbon targets, what is needed is an urbanism that understands community design as net-positive value to ecological and social environments. The goal of this project is to design a model community that achieves this goal by exploring the relationships between net-zero neighborhoods and resilience theory.