Afforrdable and Sustainable Housing
The housing 403 paper focuses on housing for affordability and housing for sustainability. Overseas examples are studied for the purposes of seeing how feasible it is to apply here to the New Zealand context. As part of the assignment, there are two options to choose from. The first is sustainability and the second is affordability. The assignment is about choosing an example from overseas and undergoing a SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats analysis to see how feasible it is to apply to the New Zealand Context. In undergoing my research for this assignment, I found the following two examples highly interesting.
Hammarby Sjostad
The housing development of Hammarby, Sjostad is located in Stockholm, Sweden. Once a former Brownfield site it is consequently a highly contaminated site. However, the development of this site has a highly green and eco-friendly focus to restore the natural attributes to the site.
There are two main features in the design of the site. The first being waste and the second being design. In looking at waste, the most interesting and innovative system in the site is the incorporation of a series of pneumatic tubes connecting the courts of the building to the neighbourhood. Recyclable waste is divided up into glass, paper, and plastic and disposed of in the appropriate tube which is then sucked off the site. The benefit of this system is that it is highly convenient for residents in encouraging them to recycle and there is no need for noisy, polluting rubbish trucks to enter the site to collect waste. Furthermore, for the non-recyclable waste such as organic waste there is a composting system which produces fertiliser for the non-edible crops and then converted into biofuel which is used for heating district plants. Finally, for the non-organic waste, it is burnt and the energy produced from burning is used to generate electricity and heating.
The result so far from this system has been that of highly successful. This has reduced the environmental load by 50% and the use of private car has decreased by 40%.
In looking at design features of the site, there is a high standard for design and amenity within the site with an aim to develop a total of 12 subdivisions containing 2000 inhabitants in each. Each block is designed around a courtyard with green open spaces that encourage pedestrian activity. Furthermore, there is a strong focus on public transit system with buses and trams and the “spine of the development” contains a 37.5m wide boulevard with mixed residential, office and commercial space.
The Hammarby project is referred to as “a model for green living”. I found this development highly interesting because it outlines methods and innovations that enable a high standard of environmentally friendly design that could easily be applied to the New Zealand context.