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CONFERENCE: Sustainable Building Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 2010

ABSTRACT:
Generally a large number of houses are purchased from the mainstream housing market, so when applied to an industry-standard model of building and land development, a better and more sustainable design has the potential to positively and significantly change the way ordinary households operate, and resolve widespread problems associated with non-sustainable houses.

Over the last few years in New Zealand, the general awareness in the housing industry of sustainability issues has been undoubtedly increased. However, mainstream housing providers are still unwilling to take the risk of transforming the traditional housing design process radically for the sake of achieving sustainability. As a result, ordinary New Zealanders are struggling to procure sustainable houses from the mainstream housing industry and this makes it almost impossible for them to achieve household sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the roots of the mainstream housing industry in New Zealand so that the prevailing issues in this particular housing sector are clearly understood, and then to identify aspects of mainstream housing design which could be improved to achieve household sustainability without radically altering current mainstream housing practice. The paper focuses on three key areas of housing, ie. the house, the neighbourhood and the process of implementation. These key areas of housing have been looked at to address three key housing aspects comprehensively, namely efficiency, flexibility and affordability. At the end the paper proposes a number of improvements in these areas, which will assist in achieving sustainability at the household level.

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