Vanguard Drive

The client

Enterprise Homes Ltd are the longest established land development and residential housing company in Christchurch. They offer high-quality house and land packages and in their 70-year history they have built over 6,000 homes and developed many prestigious sub-divisions in Christchurch. Kāinga Ora, Homes & Communities, is a Crown entity that brings together Housing New Zealand and the KiwiBuild Unit to deliver the Government’s priorities for housing and urban development. These include providing public housing and partnering with development communities on urban development projects.

Enterprise Homes were developing a greenfield site in Broomfield, Christchurch. We worked with both Enterprise Homes and Kāinga Ora, who was to take possession of a third of the site, to develop comprehensive, medium density, multi-unit housing development that was both attractive and affordable to a variety of buyers. This development represented the first comprehensive housing development for Enterprise Homes and was developed under the Canterbury Land Use Recovery Plan (LURP) and the Community Housing Redevelopment Mechanism.

We have a long-standing relationship with Enterprise Homes and had previously worked with them on their neighbouring development, Kintyre Estates, and more recently, Cashmere Park.

The challenge

Our client needed a multidisciplinary solution with strong coordination through the planning consent stage to construction management and observation. The site was highly constrained on space and with powerlines in the adjacent reserve that required a minimum set back. The development backs on to Broomfield common recreational reserve and our client wanted each dwelling to have an outlook to open space with the whole development connected to this reserve.

Our client wanted the development to have an interconnected reserves network with recreational routes and open spaces that would be attractive and usable as recreational areas. We combined these interconnected spaces with a stormwater treatment function, designing the central open space area to be a functional multi use reserve that can be enjoyed by the residents.

The solution

Our planners worked with Boffa Miskell to define an overall concept which then informed the Land Use consent application. We worked with our client through the consenting process and after liaising with traffic engineers we made some changes to the final urban design layout of the road and section layout. Our three waters engineers and landscape architects collaborated to design the stormwater management area as a multi-use reserve. This allowed for stormwater to be treated onsite and provided a central feature with the surrounding two storey buildings overlooking this open space.

Although functionally designed as a stormwater management area, the central reserve was designed to look like a natural reserve with stone walls and feature pathways. When not used for water run-off, the aesthetically designed area is usable as a recreational space.

Being pedestrian-friendly with traffic travelling at low speeds was a key consideration of the detailed design phase, with the client wanting to create an environment where it was safe enough for children to play in the street and easily walk to the neighbouring Broomfield reserve.

Shadow effects from the buildings were taken into consideration at detailed design stage with the final layout of buildings designed to ensure residents had adequate outdoor living space with optimised solar gain.

The success of this project relied heavily on strong coordination within our team and external consultants. Our planning team worked on this project from initial consent applications through to the construction phase. Throughout the whole process they understood the end outcome and appreciated how their planning decisions at the start of the process would affect the construction and ultimately, the overall success of the development.

Together our built environment design experts have a comprehensive understanding of housing design elements and their effect on adjacent open spaces. The detailed design phase took these elements further following the resource consent phase, to ensure the development met our client’s vision to develop an interconnected community centred around access to open space. This project was completed when medium-density housing was not a common consideration for homeowners. However, due to the considered design the houses were well received in the market, appealing to a range of buyers.

Find out more about how our multi-residential development services can help simplify your next project.