McLennan Park, Auckland

Brief
Create a 70-home neighbourhood that mixes standalone and terraced houses. Using standard plans to keep construction costs sharp, whilst adding character that attracts buyers and residents.

Repetition with individuality in Takanini
McLennan Park is a 600-home project — 150 of which will be affordable — on a 24-hectare site in Takanini, 28 kilometres southeast of central Auckland. Kāinga Ora provided the infrastructure and worked with partners to develop a masterplan for a thriving, safe, sustainable community. Covenants require owners to live in their homes for at least a year, ensuring these homes are for households, not investors.

Our focus was to deliver designs with enough repetition to maximise the budget — repeating floorplans and components reduce construction costs — while adding the grain and visual interest that make an area somewhere people want to live. Clarity and simplicity of form are essential to the design.

We built texture by combining the elements in a tightly constrained palette in different ways. For example, cladding boards run vertically and horizontally on nearby houses to add gentle points of difference. Rooflines vary, too, as does depth (how far back the houses are set from the street and projecting and receding planes). We tucked car parking behind terraces to minimise the visual impact of parked cars, and creepers on garden fences will create a hedge-like boundary that eats up less yard space.

The overall effect: A nuanced whole without the box-box-box feel of many fresh-baked developments.