Avondale lies to the west of Auckland’s CBD and travelling there, while avoiding motorways, presents a random sampling of the hits and many misses of the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP). Heading out on Great North Road and returning along New North Road, one can see much that is new but very little that is great, or even good.

The Community Lane development at Highbury Triangle in Avondale is an exception that is well worth the journey. Here, 50 former Housing New Zealand (HNZ) single-storey residences have been deconstructed and replaced by five new six-to-eight-storey blocks with 236 new units for disabled and the ‘aged’ (those over 55…). Well oriented, making best use of the site and its existing mature trees, and dignified in its architecture, Community Lane is a very well-conceived and executed residential development.

The suburb of Avondale sits on the western edge of the Auckland Isthmus, where, geologically, the more solid East Coast Bays formation drops towards the Whau River (once a portage through to Manukau) and the ground becomes muddy. Known now for its racecourse and the Sunday market it hosts, along with The Hollywood and the Spider, Avondale is the home of Avantdale Bowling Club, Moana Fresh, Hoopla, Whau the People and many other creative groups.

With a vocal, well-informed and proactive community, Avondale is a place where urban change is expected and is occurring – through both the housing density that the AUP enables and the completion of the City Rail Link, which will dramatically improve the train connection to the city. Both Kāinga Ora (KO) and Auckland Council (through its development arm, Eke Panuku) are significant landowners and Community Lane is one of the first by KO to demonstrate the opportunity and possible outcomes. 

The 9500m² site for Community Lane sits within an area known as Highbury Triangle: a block bounded by Great North Road, Ash Street and Rosebank Road. Here, Great North Road turns from the ‘Twin Coast Discovery Highway’ (which Ash Street continues) and becomes the main street of Avondale — a mix of small business retail, dentists, vape stores, takeaways and even a store selling ride-on mowers. The site follows the geology and drops from Great North Road towards Tait Park. To the south is the Avondale Library and partially closed Community Centre. Everyone is patiently waiting for the replacement of the centre on another site and, in turn, the existing site’s redevelopment.

Into this context in 2019 came Architectus, which had some familiarity with the site, having previously undertaken blockwide studies for Auckland Council and HNZ.

Six key site-planning moves explain the architectural concept for the whole project. An east-west connection controls movement into and through the site. North-south permeability of the blocks enables visual links and airflow between buildings and provides pedestrian connections to future neighbours. Significant trees (two pōhutukawa and one oak) have been retained and, along with the adjacent Tait Park and vegetation on the berm to the north, they provide outlook focus and privacy to the development. Outdoor space has been combined and carefully positioned for good solar access, with adjacency to the active ground floors of buildings. Stormwater has been carefully considered (with provision of infrastructure that will be available to neighbouring developments) and the resulting ground-floor levels both mitigate flooding risk and provide useful level changes between public and private space.

Anticipating a significant future pipeline of construction, the KO brief was progressive — not only to deliver 230+ units but also to pilot new ways of doing so. This has included one building (B) having a mass timber structure. Despite this, KO projects still come with many givens, including standard plan typologies, minimum room sizes (notably greater than those of ‘the market’) and material selections (at an interior finishes level, the KO architect’s role, wherever they are in the country, is to select from one of three standard lino colours…).

The design response has clearly considered the social, physical and economic context and Architectus has been typically strategic in where to focus its attention. Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Venice Biennale exhibition ‘Fundamentals/Elements of Architecture’ comes to mind when studying the Community Lane buildings — that the architectural elements that provide the most opportunity have been carefully identified, with other KO ‘givens’ accepted. Unit plans and finishes remain ‘standard’, while building types, orientation and structure are simple and similar, with clear delineation of fronts and backs. This enables careful consideration of the fundamentals – the ground-floor plan and landscape, along with the balconies, windows, staircases, cladding and control of the ‘scourge’ (services) — i.e. the architecture.

The outcome is a salient lesson in generous and dignified social housing, proving that housing for the poor does not have to be poor housing.

Formally, the balconies are used as strong compositional devices and Architectus has repeated its approach used at Wynyard Central where the externally expressed balconies provide depth, relief and a play of light and shadow on the otherwise simple and similar elevations.

The balconies were identified early on as important to the residents, especially as most are coming from housing ‘on the ground’ and this is their first apartment-living experience. Each one is generous and the proportions and dimensions enable communal occupation and use as well as containment of the obligatory clothes line and heat pump.

At ground level, the balconies are made solid — walled enclosures for which Architectus acknowledges the precedent of Bruno Taut’s Grellstrasse. The result, in combination with careful control of levels, is a clear delineation of public and private, communal and individual space for all on the ground level.

Close attention has been paid to upper balcony detailing and construction. The balustrading consists of metal vertical flats that sit perpendicular to the balcony edge. Their depth screens the occupants from oblique views while still enabling direct views through and out from both the balcony and the apartment interior. The dynamic experience of shifting between concealing and revealing (and back) that occurs as the public and neighbours move around and past the balconies works well, adding visual interest to the elevations. While this does enable, at times, public views of the objects and activity on the balconies, the occurrence and impact is minor in comparison to the benefit of views out that these balustrades afford. The result is a privacy that is ‘tuneable’ by occupants, with some residents choosing to screen further with shade cloth added to the inside face, while others are happy to let it ‘all hang out’; both approaches add to and embellish the composition.

Experienced in person, the architecture and resulting transitions between public and private are very well handled.

Thresholds are key — approach for a visitor is welcoming but the spatial arrangement is clearly ‘in favour’ of the residents. At the Tait Park end, the visitor circumnavigates the western building where the level change to its ground floor and enclosed terraces privilege the residents. The second front door of the block in this location enables this side to read as a frontage. From the east (Great North Road), the narrow lane invites, but quickly drops, shifts and opens into the primary communal space. The footpath splits from the carriageway and turns visitors to the front doors of blocks, politely challenging people’s reason to be on the property and limiting the appeal of a nosey ‘drive by’ by neighbours or architects’ rubber-necking.

The landscape and ground floors of the blocks are very well planned, with entrances and associated social spaces the most prominent while ground-floor residences are away from public pathways. Communal lounges in each block borrow from retirement home models where they are placed at the front door (unlike many developer apartments where the lounges sit atop buildings) and residents can meet visitors (friends, neighbours, groups, professionals or advisors) without bringing them further into the building or their homes.

However, Building E fronting Great North Road has the least successful ground floor. Designed for commercial or retail tenancies, the spaces were used by the contractor while the final building (B) was being completed and are currently unoccupied. The ground floor of these units has been raised above the pavement level and the result is an awkward ramping and stepped interface with the street that does not enable easy movement into and out of the premises. How quickly and successfully the tenancies may be occupied is unclear, given that commercial tenancies are outside KO’s ‘core business’, along with the lack of available quality retail tenants in general and in Avondale, in particular. While a ‘unicorn’ tenant and the activity it brings may alleviate/improve this edge, it does demonstrate the contemporary challenge of designing the commercial ground floor of suburban multi-unit residential in a declining ‘bricks and mortar’ retail environment.

The ground floor of the central white building (B) works well, adjacent to communal external spaces and community glasshouses. As well as the building entrance and its own communal room, this building has no ground-floor residences and, instead, a much larger community space with an associated meeting room, kitchen and ablutions. This will be used to host events and activities of the community, as well as being offered to the wider neighbourhood for any activities that will also include Community Lane residents, helping to enable connection and integration of this new community into Avondale.

Fundamentally, the architecture of Community Lane is very well executed and the combination of its elements is far greater than the sum of the parts. Architectus, Kāinga Ora and the wider project team have created generous and dignified social housing that positively improves the city. Finally, there is some multi-unit housing that is both new and great on Great North Road.