Beaumont Quarter, Auckland, New Zealand

The Beaumont Quarter development is a benchmark residential project in Auckland. 51 houses form the second phase of a larger scale 250-unit residential development on the edge of the central business district in Auckland, New Zealand. It seeks to introduce medium-density housing as a means to attract people back to the city.

The challenge was how to create qualities normally associated with suburban living in such a development and on a very restricted topographical location. The site is of historic importance, once having been the old harbour front. At the beginning of the twentieth century the harbour was reclaimed and cut back to form a cliff face, while the slope negotiates the change in topography as it descends to the street at the front of the site. The site has been sensitively redeveloped, incorporating existing buildings as part of the regeneration strategy.

The project is bound together by a new public space; a boardwalk that moves from the park and climbs up the cliff top, making the cliff landscape accessible as part of the street network below.

HOUSING CONCEPT

Four houses were conceived (cliffhanger, leapfrog, zigzag and the saddlebag) that are shaped by the different and often contradictory forces present on the site: motorway noise, stunning views across the bay, minimal footprint, large houses, parking, active street frontage, sun, privacy and outdoor space.

The houses are conceived as a series of simple volumes, consistent in materiality but differentiated through subtle colour shifts. Familiar materials such as galvanised metal, wood and corrugated steel are used in an unfamiliar way. The composition of units also a play between the traditional notions of villa and terrace typologies.

CONSTRUCTION

The construction is predominantly timber frame and stud with Hardyflex skin for inter-tenancy fire separation. This is only modified when set into the ground, where bracing walls made of concrete block are or over the car-park, where the saddlebags sit on a semi basement car-park of prefab load-bearing concrete hollow-core planks spanning across concrete beams. Concrete floors are also used for fire and earthquake resistance. This is seen on the cliff to protect the leapfrog below from the cliffhanger above.

The façade material is treated as powder-coated aluminium frames and cladding. Cladding is baby corrugate sheeting. The project also features single clear glazing galvanised steel balustrades.

Outdoor terraces and boardwalk are Kwila sustainable hardwood timber decking. Undercrofts and terrace returns are Hardyflex composite panels, flush jointed and painted.