Dr Chris Litten: BRANZ General Manager of Research on the building sector body developing pre-designed home plans

One of New Zealand's leading building sector bodies is launching standard house designs that will be available to all, in an attempt to bring down costs.

The Building Research Association of New Zealand has developed an accessible plan for building an affordable and sustainable home. 

BRANZ General Manager of Research Dr Chris Litten says housing affordability is a significant issue in New Zealand - and the company's looking to develop a solution.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Brian Bridge.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
One size fits All home designs the future of housing
in New Zealand, That is the question. The Building Research
Association of New Zealand Brands is getting ready to launch
its new consent ready home plans. This is in the
next couple of months that all happen.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
They say that.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Their pre designed three bedroom home will save home builders
huge costs on architects. Dr Chris Lisen is the GM
of Research at Brands and joins me.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Now, Hello, Hi Roan, how are you going tonight?

Speaker 4 (00:45):
Very good? Thank you. Now give us the elevator pitch on.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
This, okay. So we really know that housing affordable is
the real key issue for New Zealanders. So Brands is
all about using our research and test think about create
practical solutions and to do that we've come up with
a development of the next home and it's really to
show New Zealanders that you can build high quality, low
carbon and affordable homes. So we'll have these designs available

(01:10):
later in this year for free download. Said, anyone can
use it and they'll be consent ready, so you should
be able to use it anywhere across New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
When you say consent ready, do you mean pre consented
or do you mean what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
So there's a scheme that the government runs called multiproof,
and these designs will be approved by that. So he's
literally about to take the designs, go to your counsel
and say here they are. Can we build a particular
building on what of the land I've got? Councilors should
say yes, and that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
What will this save your average house builder?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, these designs. I think one of the misconceptions is
that high quality and low carbon or sustainable buildings are expensive,
and we're showing them not. So these designs are going
to be about the same price as a standard building
that's going on at the moment. But you get the
added benefits of saying really high quality, which means great
indoor equality, which means you will be healthier your carbon

(02:04):
footprint if your inentinant carbon footprint will about fifty percent
lower than your standard how and yet it will be
a similar price to what you'd be paying normally.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
And I mean it sounds too good to be true
of course.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Is there a catch?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
There is no catch, and that's why we do this
research to really try and understand this sort of stuff.
So yeah, as I said before, there's a been misconception
that high quality and sustainable means unaffordable, and we're showing
that's not.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
What about the each site has its own quirks and
sunlight coming in different directions.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
How do you account for all of that?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, that's really why they still do need to go
to the council to get that consent to say actually,
this is the right place. I'm not about to build
on a floodplain or on a slippery all that's going
to wash my house away or anything like that. So
that is that we can't control that. There's very much
having those designs, talking to the council about it, and
it should be very simple to get it all sorted
out with them.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
How do you think this could scale up? You know,
whill we have entire suburbs of identical homes.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, one of the real issues with New Zealand is
we all love to have something different, Right, every home
we want looked different to their names. As an unfortunate
it's just not the way you can build sustainable and
build sustainable and have sort of affordable homes. So these
designs are very much about standardization. They've got standard window sizes,
they do have some standard floor structures and layouts. But

(03:24):
the end of the day, I think this really is
you sees a lot of places are all similar. You
can paint these made, these things can look different, but
it is the way of the future. Really.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
It's about affordability. It's not about fleshy.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
It is about affordabile. It's not about fleshy. But again,
in this case, fleshy means it's really high quality and
you're going to have a great healthy environment inside the home,
which quite a lot of homes don't have.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
For so the architects angry at you.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
We've got our own architects on board. We've had architects
peer review these and they're all really excited about what's
going on.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
No one's going to be put out of business.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
That's not our aim. Our aim is very much about
having some really good designs that people can use. And
we're not going to make anyone use them, of course,
but they're there and available. If you want to, you
go for.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
It, all right, We'll leave it there thanks so much
for your time. Doctor Chris Listen is the GM of
Researcher Brands.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
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